Interim Senior Vice President of Finance — Controls

Hurdles that ask what an investment depends on

Most investment hurdles test returns: a payback period, an internal rate of return, a margin threshold. Fewer test what the return depends on. Yet in a services business the returns on a new practice, a technology platform or an acquisition usually hinge on things the financial case treats as given: that the right people can be hired and kept, that a system will be delivered on time, that controls will be in place before volume arrives. The Interim Senior Vice President of Finance is appointed to set hurdles that force those dependencies into the open, so that the board approves investments knowing what has to go right.

Authority that comes from the board

Reporting directly to the Board of Directors, you will carry executive authority over the investment framework. You will set how investment decisions are allocated, including the thresholds local leaders keep, and select the evidence the business will rely on when overseeing spending, capacity and controls. Measured against the new hurdles, each existing commitment will continue, wait or end on your decision. You will refuse any proposal that parks cost or risk where nobody owns it and decline cases that leave out adoption, dependencies or the bad case. You will approve the route by which exceptions reach the board, and give directors a regular cadence on progress, exceptions and open decisions.

From agreed hurdles to routine approvals

Within the first ninety days, investment hurdles should be agreed with the board that require every case to state its delivery and control dependencies. By month nine, live commitments should have been reassessed against those hurdles, with cases that lack dependency evidence paused or declined. By month 12, the hurdle framework should be part of every investment approval, and the board should be receiving regular reporting on the exceptions it has allowed.

A finance leader who has said no to an unnamed downside

Through buy-side M&A you have reset who decides, how money flows and the rhythm of operating reviews, in a business of $515 million or more in revenue, 2,000 or more people and five countries. You can tell an exception a market truly needs from a local habit that has simply never been questioned. You have turned down funding for cases that named neither their users nor their downside, and then built the finance capability to do it better. Directors will look closely at buy-side M&A, professionalisation and succession in your history, and expect capital allocation at level 4, with risk judgement, FP&A forecasting, and controls and reporting at level 3. Acquisitions matter especially here, because they are where dependency assumptions are most often buried in a single synergy line. Uncertainty, in your hands, is something to report and work through rather than wait out. No country leader holds a veto over your decision to end a commitment, and the whole 12 months are yours to answer for.

Meeting the board and its risk chair

The Board of Directors meets you first, by private video call, in the opening week. The Risk Committee Chair, in week three, will press you on how control dependencies should be stated and tested in an investment case. Executive leaders from each function, who would be submitting cases against your hurdles, see you face to face in week five, and the board's directors follow in week 7. Our verdict on each stage comes to you in writing within four working days.