Interim Chief Investment and Finance Officer — Delivery

A hurdle rate is not enough

Most investment hurdles test return: does the project clear the cost of capital with some margin to spare? Fewer test whether it can be delivered, or what controls it relies on to stay safe once it is running. In logistics and infrastructure, where a new terminal, route or depot depends on systems, people, permits and other projects landing on time, that omission is where value quietly leaks. The Interim Chief Investment and Finance Officer is appointed to set hurdles that ask the second set of questions as firmly as the first.

That means requiring every investment case to state what it depends on to be delivered, which controls must be in place for it to operate, and who answers for each. It means treating a case that cannot answer as incomplete rather than optimistic.

What the authority covers

Executive authority comes with the role, which reports to the Audit Committee Chair. You will set the rules for investment decisions, including the amount country managers may approve without reference upward, and specify what must be demonstrated before capital is released, capacity committed or controls relied upon. Each inherited commitment continues, pauses or stops on your decision. You will block proposals that leave cost or risk without an owner who answers for it, and decline investment where the case does not address take-up, dependencies on other projects or downside. You will approve the leadership arrangements and the way issues rise, and arbitrate between operating leaders and the centre ahead of any capital commitment.

Eighteen months, from hurdle to habit

The first ninety days should agree the new hurdles, requiring delivery and control dependencies to be stated, and give each capital programme an accountable owner. Around month nine, new and inherited investment cases should have been reviewed against those hurdles, with unsupported cases declined or paused. By month 18 the hurdles should be part of every capital approval, and exceptions arising after approval should be tracked and closed by the people who own them rather than rediscovered at the next review.

The person who should hold the pen

You have made finance choices in logistics and infrastructure services where delay had a measurable cost; the organisations were of $380 million in revenue or more, 2,100 people or more and six countries or more. Experience of M&A buy-side work, platform pivots and turnaround will be weighed; each is a setting where investment is made under incomplete information and dependencies surface late. Capital allocation is expected at level 4, with risk judgement, controls and reporting, and FP&A forecasting each at level 3. You can tell a local exception that genuinely serves customers from one that persists out of habit. Your accountability continues past the approval meeting, into the dull business of closing finance exceptions months later.

From first call to investment committee

Brevity is deliberate here. Things start in week one with the Audit Committee Chair, on a confidential video call. In week two the Regional President gives you a case to work through together, and in the third week you meet the investment committee in person. Expect our response, in writing, within two working days of each meeting.