Interim Country Head of Finance — Renewal

Not a reporting clean-up

Read quickly, this appointment looks like a reporting project: tidier packs, faster closes, fewer restatements. Those may follow, but they are not the point. The point is that a report earns its place only when it changes a decision, and finance earns its seat only when it challenges decisions before they are made. The Interim Country Head of Finance is there to connect the two, so that the quality of what the board reads and the strength of finance's challenge rise together.

Nor is it an advisory role. It carries executive authority and a direct line to the Board of Directors.

Reports that are built for a decision

You will set the rules for finance decisions, decide how much country finance teams may sign off themselves, and pick the measures that steer capital, people and control. You will determine whether each commitment continues, pauses or ends, and halt anything that loads cost or risk onto no one in particular. Investment cases that skip over take-up, dependencies or the cost of failure will be declined. You will shape the finance leadership team and the way problems surface, mediate when directors and business heads disagree, and agree the rhythm at which the board reviews progress, exceptions and decisions still outstanding.

A useful test for any management report is to ask which decision it would change. Reports that cannot answer that should shrink or go; reports that can should be built so that finance has something specific to challenge and the board something specific to decide. Applying that test report by report is slow, unglamorous work, and it is where most of the improvement will come from.

The person behind the challenge

Your knowledge of funds and asset management comes from decisions you owned yourself, including an unsupported commitment stopped before its consequences arrived. In earlier finance roles, any exception you allowed to continue first had a clear owner for what it cost. The organisations behind that record ran in six countries, with at least 1,000 people and revenue of $845 million or more. Once the board has decided, you stay accountable, down to the slow job of closing finance exceptions one at a time.

The selection will examine buy-side M&A, succession and professionalisation in your record, and capital allocation at level 4 alongside risk judgement, FP&A forecasting, and controls and reporting at level 3. If every national head must agree before you will close a commitment, or you would rather have influence than twelve months of accountability, the seat will frustrate you.

The year ahead and the weeks before it

By the end of the first ninety days, the board and you should have agreed reporting standards that tie each management report to the decisions finance is expected to challenge. Around month nine, reporting exceptions should be owned and closed, and finance's challenge should be on record for capital and operating proposals before they are approved. By month 12, directors should be relying on that reporting for country decisions, with outstanding exceptions and finance challenges reviewed on an agreed cadence.

Selection opens in week one with a remote conversation, held in confidence, with the Board of Directors; the Board Chair follows in week three with a working exercise. Week five puts you in person before a panel of executives representing each function, and week seven brings you to the full board. Responses to each stage arrive within two working days.