Interim Country Managing Director — Controls (Real Estate)

A leader who has steered a carve-out

The Managing Director we want has redrawn decision rights, budgets and the operating rhythm during a carve-out, when a business had to stand on its own while still trading. The businesses concerned were of real size: $725 million or more in revenue, 2,400 or more people, seven or more countries. We will also explore professionalisation and buy-side M&A; together they point to someone who has both taken businesses apart and put them together, and who has turned informal practice into a system people follow. Your record should show cases where the evidence redirected people, capital or management attention.

The capability weighed most is strategy formation, at level 4; P&L ownership, setting the operating cadence and risk judgement are each needed at level 3. You keep the controls that earn their place, put a price on every exception, and hand on a deeper bench of operating leaders than you inherited.

The trade-off the Managing Director will own

Answering to the Board Chair for 12 months, the Interim Country Managing Director holds executive authority to balance near-term cash with strategic capacity. Getting the balance right is a series of specific decisions, not a policy statement, and each one should show what is being protected and what it costs.

The Managing Director agrees with the Board Chair the country thresholds that local leadership keeps and the evidence on which capital, cash and control decisions are made. They assess the commitments already made and decide which proceed, which wait and which stop. They refuse proposals that offload cost or risk onto people who never agreed to take it, decline investment whose case omits uptake, dependencies or the downside, and decide who leads which part of the portfolio and how problems are raised. For a family-owned business the long view is an asset, and the Managing Director's task is to protect it with the cash discipline that keeps it affordable.

A year of decisions on cash and capacity

Near-term cash priorities, the strategic capacity that is protected, and someone accountable for each control across the portfolio should all be agreed with the Board Chair across the first ninety days. Around month nine, country controls should have been tested on real cash and capital decisions, with each exception owned and closed. By month 12, cash and strategic capacity should be weighed in every property decision as a matter of course, with controls held by accountable leaders.

Four stages, cash and controls in view

Week one is a confidential conversation with the Board Chair over video. Then, in the third week, comes a session with the Audit Committee Chair on how cash and capital controls should work in practice. In week five you meet face to face with executives leading each function, and the whole board in week seven. You can count on our response in writing within three working days of each stage.