Interim President, International Markets — Growth at Scale

Twelve months to make international markets pay now and later

Over twelve months, the measure of this interim presidency is whether the board can see, market by market, which international activity is earning its keep today and which is building something worth having in three years, and whether each is being funded on purpose. The first ninety days are about getting that view on paper: the thresholds each country leader can act within, and an agreed basis for judging where capital goes. Around month nine the inherited international commitments should have been sorted, each kept, held or wound down on the evidence, with the cash and capacity freed by those choices visible to the board rather than absorbed quietly. By month 12 the leadership structure for international markets, and the way issues travel from a country to the board, should be settled, so that whoever leads next inherits a working system rather than a set of personal arrangements.

Executive authority over a listed group's international book

The President holds executive authority on behalf of the Board of Directors, to which the role reports. You will decide which decisions sit with country leaders and which come to the centre. You will choose the information the board uses to judge where investment and operating capacity go across markets. Any proposal that relocates cost or exposure without one accountable executive behind it stops with you, as do cases that are silent on who will take up a new capability, what it relies on operationally, or how it behaves if things go badly. Where the directors and the country operators disagree, you will settle it before resources are committed.

The tension at the heart of the job is familiar to anyone who has run international markets for a listed company. Cash released this year is visible and rewarded; capacity built for later is easy to cut and slow to rebuild. A good interim president does not simply pick a side. They make the trade-off explicit, decision by decision, and keep it reversible wherever the facts are still thin.

Professionalised, partnered and succeeded

The board expects international general management behind you, in businesses no smaller than $390 million in revenue and 1,200 people, operating across five countries. Three experiences matter: professionalisation, where you turned informal habits into a management system without losing pace; a joint venture, where you shared control and still got decisions made; and succession, where you built the next layer of leaders rather than relying on yourself. Strategy formation at level 4 is the headline capability; below it, level 3 is expected in operating cadence, in owning a P&L and in judging risk. Most telling of all would be an example of a reversible decision you took on incomplete operating evidence and then tightened as the facts improved, and of the unglamorous follow-through that came after the board had decided.

From the boardroom to the risk chair and back

Selection starts and finishes with the directors. In week one the Board of Directors holds a confidential first call, by video, with you. In the third week the Risk Committee Chair works through with you how you price downside in international markets. During the fifth week you sit in person before executive leaders, one from each major function, and the seventh week returns you to the directors for their closing board discussion. Expect the board's assessment of each stage in writing, no more than four working days later.