The world's attention will be focused on the 2012 OlympicGames in London in late July as 10.8 million ticket holders, 15,000athletes and 21,000 media pros gather in the U.K.'s capital. Butfor Neil Wood, CFO for the committee organizing the London Games,the months ahead represent the culmination of almost a decade'shard work. Wood's journey to the 2012 Games started nine years ago,when he worked at Deloitte as an audit partner. “Back in 2003, whenit was decided that the bid would go forward, the LondonDevelopment Authority (LDA) put in £10 million for apart-financed bid and said it wanted to nominate someone as theCFO,” says Wood. “The LDA invited the big accounting firms to putforward a candidate for the role. I was looking for something bigand interesting to do, and I was put forward by Deloitte.”

It turned out to be a complicated process, but Wood wasappointed CFO of the London 2012 bid, and when the bid wassuccessful in July 2005, Deloitte agreed to extend his temporaryposting to the organizing committee, enabling him to stay on asCFO.

Set up in 2005, the London Organizing Committee of the OlympicGames and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) is the private-sector companyresponsible for staging the games. It sits alongside the OlympicDelivery Authority (ODA), a publicly funded body tasked withsetting up the required infrastructure.