Interim Regional Finance and Capital Director — Delivery (Hospitality)

Separating the margin that stays from the margin that visits

Hospitality margins are noisy. A strong season, a pricing adjustment or a one-off cost saving can flatter the numbers for a quarter or two, and a poor one can obscure an underlying improvement. Leaders who cannot tell structural margin from temporary price and volume effects end up making lasting decisions on passing evidence. Giving leadership that distinction, clearly and for the full 24 months, is why this interim director is being appointed.

Reporting to the audit committee chair

The director reports to the Audit Committee Chair, an unusual and deliberate line that places margin evidence close to the board's own scrutiny. The authority is executive: this is an interim leader who decides, not a reviewer.

Rulings on limits, commitments and cases

Regional finance limits are the director's to set, including those left with local leaders, along with the measures by which spending, capacity and control are judged. Every inherited commitment receives a ruling. A finance proposal that parks its cost or risk with someone who never agreed to hold it is stopped, and investment is declined where the case is silent on uptake, on operating dependencies or on the downside. The director approves how the finance leadership team is organised and how unresolved matters rise, and brings the Audit Committee Chair and operating leaders to agreement before capital is spent.

Two years, property by property

By the close of the first ninety days, leadership should agree a view of structural margin for each property and market, with recurring cost separated from one-off items. Around month nine each margin driver should have an accountable leader, and capital requests should be tested against their effect on structural margin rather than on the next quarter. By month 24 structural margin reporting should be part of regional planning, maintained by a finance team that no longer needs interim leadership to produce it.

The finance leader for a noisy business

The finance teams you have led should have served organisations with at least $550 million of revenue and 4,300 people across seven countries, and your record should show turnaround, professionalisation and regulatory remediation. Margin clarity matters because it changes where capital goes, so capital allocation is weighted at level 4; FP&A forecasting, controls reporting and risk judgement are each sought at level 3.

You have made finance calls where every week of hesitation had a price, and you have kept an exception from running on until someone took on what it cost. You keep the controls that pay their way and make the rest justify themselves. Faced with a margin swing nobody can yet explain, you tell the Audit Committee Chair what is known, what is not, and when the answer will come.

Two committee chairs, then the board

Both committee chairs come before the board. In week 1 the Audit Committee Chair talks with you alone, over video. In week 3 the Risk Committee Chair takes you through how margin evidence and risk appetite should shape capital decisions. In week 5 you meet, in person, a panel of executives who each lead a different function; the directors together see you in week 7. We will send you our feedback in writing within four working days of every stage.