Advisory Director — Capital and Performance (Consumer and Retail)

The questions a downside case forces

Every finance team has a base case it believes and a downside case it produces because someone asked. The difference between a business that is resilient and one that merely looks it is whether the downside case ever changes a decision. The Advisory Director is appointed to counsel the Group Chief Financial Officer on exactly that, and the value of the seat lies in a series of judgement calls that advice can sharpen but not take over.

The first is how severe the downside should be. Too mild and it confirms every existing plan; too harsh and it is dismissed as unrealistic, which leaves the organisation exactly where it started. Agreeing a scenario that leaders accept as plausible and still uncomfortable is a skill in itself. The second is the order in which commitments are tested. Some are large and visible; others are small but numerous, or tied to contracts that are harder to unwind than they appear. The adviser will help decide where scrutiny pays back first. The third is what counts as affordable. A commitment can survive a downside on paper and still consume the cash or management attention that something more important needed.

The fourth call is the most delicate: recommending that something be stopped. The adviser's most valuable early contribution could be a commitment halted, not an initiative launched, and that recommendation must hold up on evidence when the people who championed it push back.

What the adviser shapes, and what stays with the executive

Because the seat is advisory, decisions remain with the Group Chief Financial Officer and the executive. The adviser helps agree how capital commitments are decided and which thresholds remain local, and counsels on what proof should sit behind decisions about spending, capacity and control. They recommend which inherited commitments should carry on and which should be paused or ended. They challenge proposals that would leave cost or risk with nobody prepared to own it, and investment cases that take adoption on faith, gloss over what they depend on or never describe a bad year. They offer a view on the finance leadership structure and how exceptions rise, help the Group Chief Financial Officer and operating leaders settle disagreements before money and people are tied up, and help shape the cadence of the board's reviews of progress and open decisions.

How the advice should show up over 24 months

Early on, inside the first ninety days, a downside case and the method for testing capital decisions against it should be agreed between the adviser and the Group Chief Financial Officer, with a responsible leader for each commitment. Around month nine every inherited commitment should have been run through the downside case, and the resulting recommendations should have been reviewed by finance leadership and acted on. By month 24 downside testing should be a standing part of capital review and board reporting, and the finance team should run it without advisory support.

An adviser who has bought businesses and lived with them

Your record comes from organisations of $795 million or more in revenue, employing 2,100 people across three countries. Experience of buy-side M&A, succession and geographic expansion will be examined; acquisitions especially, since few things teach the gap between a deal model's base case and its downside so thoroughly. Capital allocation is expected at level 4. Controls and reporting, FP&A forecasting and risk judgement should each be at level 3. You can tell a market exception that is necessary from one that history has protected, and you can lay out what remains unknown for a chief financial officer without using it as a reason to wait.

Your first conversation, in week one, is with the Group Chief Financial Officer, held privately over video. A fortnight later, in week three, the Regional President works through with you how a downside case would play out in the operating units. In week five, executives leading each of the main functions meet you face to face; the seventh week closes matters with the full board. You will have our reflections in writing no later than five working days after each stage.