Interim Chief Investment and Finance Officer — Delivery Recovery

How the hurdles should bed in over two years

Three agreements with the Group Chief Financial Officer should be in place by day ninety: the investment hurdles themselves, the thresholds at which capital decisions stay local or come to the centre, and an accountable owner for every dependency a funded case relies on. A hurdle rate alone is not enough. The point of this appointment is a test that asks, before money is released, what has to be delivered by whom for the return to materialise, and which controls must hold for the risk to stay where the case says it will.

By around month nine, inherited investments should have been re-examined against those hurdles. Some will pass comfortably. Others will be funded on condition that their delivery and control dependencies are named and owned. A few will be stopped, and the officer should expect at least one of those decisions to be unpopular. By month 24 the discipline should sit inside the planning cycle and board reporting as a normal part of how capital is allocated, and a finance successor should be applying the hurdles without the interim's help.

Power to hold the line on capital

The Interim Chief Investment and Finance Officer holds executive authority, exercised under the Group Chief Financial Officer. The officer writes the rules for investment decisions, including the limits up to which local leaders approve on their own, settles what proof spending, capacity and control decisions must rest on, and decides whether each inherited commitment is kept, held or wound down. Finance proposals that quietly relocate cost or risk to a budget holder who never signed for it will be stopped; value cases that assume adoption, ignore what they depend on or omit a downside will be rejected. The officer also approves the finance leadership structure and the channel through which exceptions reach senior finance, and resolves conflicts between the Group Chief Financial Officer and operating leaders before funds are committed.

Integration as the proving ground

Your finance career will include a business with revenue of at least $615 million, 1,900 people and four countries, and you can tell a local practice that a market truly requires from one kept alive because nobody questioned it. Your record in succession, integration and value creation will be weighed carefully. Integration is the most telling of the three, because combining businesses exposes every dependency that a standalone investment case left out. Capital allocation is required at level 4. Level 3 is required in three further areas: risk judgement, controls and reporting, and FP&A forecasting.

The temperament matters as much as the technique. Faced with partial operating data, you have made a decision you could undo and sharpened it as better numbers arrived. You can lay a known gap in the numbers before the Group Chief Financial Officer and still recommend a decision. And you bring finance successors through while the hurdles are being introduced, so that what is expected at month 24 holds once the interim has gone.

Meeting the finance leadership and the board

Four stages follow. Stage one, in week one, puts you on a confidential video link with the Group Chief Financial Officer to discuss how you would design hurdles that expose dependencies. The third week is given to the Audit Committee Chair, who will test the control side of investment decisions in detail. Week five puts you in a room with executive leaders from each function, the people whose cases will meet your hurdles, to explore how they would work in practice. The board's directors conclude the process in week seven. Our written view of each stage reaches you within three working days.