Interim Group CFO — Automotive Services Opening Balances and Cash Separation

The mandate

An automotive-services carve-out comprising three operating entities is separating from a diversified owner after the transaction timetable advanced and the intended finance appointee withdrew. Cash collection, payroll and vendor settlement still depend on parent processes, while the transfer perimeter contains disputed workshop assets and intercompany balances. You will take the group finance seat on 26 October 2026 for nine months, providing executive continuity while the permanent group CFO search proceeds. The immediate priority is functioning subsidiaries, not a retrospective defence of the transaction model.

In the first thirty days, you must establish which receipts and obligations legally belong to each separated entity and create a controlled path for funds that still pass through parent accounts. Each opening balance sheet needs evidence owners for transferred assets, employee provisions, customer advances and vendor accruals. Cross-entity differences will remain visible in a settlement register rather than being buried through netting. You will manage the transitional-service cost envelope and decide which finance dependencies can safely terminate before their contractual end dates.

The interim may authorise ordinary subsidiary payments within the board-approved cash plan, appoint temporary transition support and set the consolidated close timetable across nineteen finance colleagues. Borrowing, settlement of disputed purchase adjustments and permanent leadership appointments require steering-committee approval. You cannot amend the sale agreement, move cash between entities outside approved agreements or transfer security without legal and board clearance. Customer pricing strategy, workshop network rationalisation and technology-product redesign are excluded; financial consequences of those choices can be assessed, but their execution is not part of this seat.

Handover is expected by July 2027 when independent banking is operating for all three subsidiaries, two successive consolidated closes reconcile to approved entity opening balances and all continuing parent dependencies have named contract owners. The permanent group appointee must receive tested payment delegations, a thirteen-week entity-and-group cash model and unresolved settlement items with evidence and next decisions. Any extension requires written approval within an overall 24-month cap. A successful exit leaves ordinary finance running without a parallel shadow controller retained from the former parent.

What you will own

• Authorise the first independent cash-control framework, identifying bank signatories, payment evidence and emergency escalation routes before parent treasury ceases routine settlement support for the transferred business.
• Resolve opening-balance evidence gaps through asset custody records, employee obligations and transaction documents, referring disputed consideration adjustments to the steering committee with a clearly costed recommendation.
• Decide the sequence of finance transitional-service exits using tested operational readiness, contract notice periods and duplicate running costs rather than arbitrary separation anniversaries or vendor promises.
• Set a weekly intercompany settlement review that distinguishes business-owned cash, parent advances and disputed service charges, preventing offset arrangements from hiding individual obligations or impairing audit evidence.
• Build the successor's control book with payment thresholds, close dependencies and material accounting positions, requiring each finance lead to demonstrate their process before the permanent CFO's induction.
• Approve temporary finance-resource deployment against specific separation bottlenecks, maintaining an expiry and transfer plan so emergency support does not become an unauthorised permanent organisational expansion.
• Present handover readiness against the agreed banking, close and contract tests, documenting remaining risks explicitly instead of treating the arrival of a permanent executive as proof of completion.

Candidate qualifications

• Offer eighteen to twenty-two years of finance experience with direct responsibility for a carve-out, entity separation or comparably demanding stand-alone finance transition. Show the opening-balance or cash-ownership decisions you personally made, including the evidence that changed your initial conclusion and the unresolved issues you deliberately escalated rather than forcing into the close.
• Demonstrate professional accounting strength and the ability to interpret a transaction perimeter alongside legal advisers. You must distinguish purchase-adjustment disputes, operating liabilities and transitional-service costs without confusing their owners or accounting consequences. Experience should include constructing auditable records from incomplete parent data and preserving traceability while daily payments and customer operations continued.
• Have held executive payment and treasury responsibility in an asset-backed or service-centre business. Explain how you prevented a separation from disrupting payroll, critical parts suppliers or customer advance balances, and how you tested independent banking readiness. A plan prepared without authority over actual cash decisions does not establish the required seat experience for this engagement.
• Be available for an onsite start on 26 October 2026 and capable of providing a genuine nine-month leadership commitment. Evidence a previous handover that left a permanent successor with usable controls, trained deputies and an honest residual-risk register. You should be comfortable declining scope expansion when its funding, authority or completion conditions have not been agreed by the board.

Application

Applications for this mandate are received in one way only: through the India Board Terminal's application process. It is automated end to end. Your Executive Passport travels to the mandate holder in its confidential form, your answers to the three questions below are read before anything else in your file, and every stage that follows is recorded on your applications page.

There is no address to write to and no intermediary to call. The mandate holder reads what the Terminal delivers and nothing else, which is what keeps the process the same for every applicant and keeps your name out of it until you release it. Applications close on 11 October 2026. Mandate reference CVU-INT-2026-IND-004.