Chief Financial Officer — Interim, Port Terminal

The mandate

An independent review found that concession fees and minimum-volume exposure were understated in the terminal's long-range model. Lenders have requested a cure plan, and the CFO resigned before covenant testing could be restated.

The interim must join within two weeks for fifteen months through model correction, refinancing and the next statutory audit. Permanent search begins when lenders accept the revised base case, with two months planned for overlap.

Handover requires a closed ₹1,400 crore refinancing, a finance-validated tariff and volume model, unmodified audit, twelve months of covenant headroom under downside case, and a successor who certifies the concession-obligation register.

The CFO may correct assumptions, negotiate within approved financing terms and approve payments under ₹4 crore. New security, concession amendments and settlements above ₹8 crore need board consent; berth operations and customer-volume commitments remain outside finance authority.

Crane procurement, labour negotiations and development of an adjacent terminal are excluded. Finance must inform those decisions without absorbing their delivery ownership.

Why this seat is open

The model error undermined the figures used by lenders and the board. Executive departure leaves the terminal without credible finance leadership during a potential covenant event. A seasoned infrastructure CFO must reset the economics and provide a defensible platform for permanent succession.

What you will own

• Rebuild the concession model from tariff, volume, escalation, fee, capex and minimum-guarantee evidence.
• Decide accounting and forecast corrections required after comparing actual obligations with prior assumptions.
• Negotiate lender cure and refinancing options inside the approved leverage and security envelope.
• Establish a twelve-month covenant forecast with downside volume, tariff and downtime sensitivities.
• Certify tariff contribution by customer and cargo type without committing operating capacity.
• Close audit remediation across concession accounting, asset capitalisation and revenue cut-off.
• Transfer lender relationships, model ownership and obligation controls through two successor-led cycles.

Candidate qualifications

• Chartered accountant with more than twenty-two years in ports, transport or concession-based infrastructure finance.
• Closed a project or corporate refinancing above ₹1,000 crore under covenant or model pressure.
• Deep expertise in concession accounting, tariff economics, minimum guarantees, project debt and capital controls.
• Experience correcting a board model whose contractual assumptions materially misstated risk.
• Strong lender and audit-committee credibility during adverse disclosure and financing negotiation.
• Prior handover of complex infrastructure finance to a permanent executive with model governance intact.

Non-negotiables

• Available in Mumbai within two weeks and onsite through lender and audit milestones.
• No current engagement with the port authority, lenders or model advisers involved.
• Will disclose every adverse model correction rather than optimise solely for covenant appearance.
• Can commit exclusively for fifteen months and the successor transition.

1. 49 words maximum. Confirm your notice position and earliest date to assume terminal finance authority.
2. 49 words maximum. What concession-model error did you correct, and how did it alter financing headroom?
3. 49 words maximum. Which infrastructure refinancing did you close under lender escalation?