Interim Country Head of Finance — Value Agenda (Energy and Utilities)

Not a forecaster of the best case

Plenty of finance leaders can build a plan that works if things go well. This seat asks for the opposite discipline. The Interim Country Head of Finance is not being appointed to sharpen the central forecast or to run a cost-cutting exercise with a fixed target. The task is to construct a downside case the business believes, then decide, commitment by commitment, which ones the country can still afford if that case arrives. A downside case only has value if it is uncomfortable enough to change decisions, and if the people whose commitments it tests accept that it is fair.

Authority to say what the country cannot afford

This is interim executive authority, held under the Group Chief Financial Officer. You will draw the decision rights for the country's finances, including the limits within which local leaders decide, and choose the downside tests that investment, capacity and control decisions in the country must survive. You decide which inherited commitments go forward, which are paused and which end. You can stop proposals that move a cost or exposure onto a budget holder who never said yes, and decline cases that skip over take-up, the work they lean on or how they might fail. You confirm who leads country finance and how problems reach you, work through disputes with the asset, regulatory and commercial heads before capital is released, and decide how the board hears about progress, exceptions and unresolved choices.

In energy and utility services, a downside case has to capture more than demand or price. Asset condition, regulatory outcomes, supply terms and project timing all move the picture, and they are owned in different parts of the business. Good finance leadership here means pulling those owners into the case rather than modelling around them.

The finance head this needs

Your record includes a succession you carried whose effects were felt in the boardroom and on site alike, together with leadership of a business with revenue of $510 million or more, 1,000 people and three countries. More than once, a downside you modelled has moved people, money or management attention to where it was needed. The Group Chief Financial Officer will test what succession, cost transformation and culture reset taught you, and wants capital allocation at level 4 alongside a solid level 3 in risk judgement, in FP&A forecasting, and in controls and reporting. You build a finance successor in parallel with the new downside discipline, so it keeps working after you leave. A commitment can be stopped without a vote among the country teams, and all 24 months are yours to answer for.

The downside case, tested and handed on

By the close of the first ninety days a country downside case should be settled with the Group Chief Financial Officer, with every material commitment owned and tested against it. Around month nine the commitments that fail that test should be on hold or closed, and the close and forecast calendar should be running to agreed thresholds. By month 24 the country's commitments should be affordable under a downside case that has itself been tested, and a finance successor should be ready to own the portfolio.

The selection moves the same way, from the case to the people who will live with it. Your first conversation, held privately on video in week 1, is with the Group Chief Financial Officer about how you would build the downside case. The Risk Committee Chair works through it with you in week three. In week five you meet the executives who head each function in person, and the whole board of directors in the seventh. A written response follows each stage within four working days.