Interim Vice President, Financial Planning Integration — Consumer Business Combination

The mandate

Two consumer businesses have entered a combination with different forecast calendars and incompatible management views in the middle of an active trading period, and the combined planning function needs an executive owner. The interim appointee will take charge of the combined planning function, keeping executives supplied with a dependable operating outlook while joining the two processes. Acquisition accounting and legal integration have designated owners. This seat is responsible for the finance decisions that cannot wait for an ideal future organisation, including how management distinguishes underlying trading from adjustments introduced by the combination itself.

The engagement starts on 26 October 2026 for nine months at five days a week. Twenty-seven planners form the direct perimeter, with Mumbai as the base and regular Delhi NCR operating reviews. A permanent VP search proceeds alongside the interim appointment. The immediate work is to secure the next forecast and executive trading review, establish accountable assumptions and stop conflicting interpretations from producing contradictory resource decisions. Integration should simplify management's choices without forcing either business to discard operating detail essential to its commercial model.

Delegation covers forecast standards, planning-team allocation and finance recommendation on funded resources. The CFO approves material budget changes, strategic integration commitments and alterations to executive reporting policy. Commercial leaders remain responsible for customer prices and trading actions; controllers own acquisition adjustments and statutory accounting. The interim VP must make disagreements explicit and route them promptly, preserving an auditable bridge between reported performance and management's chosen operating view rather than allowing unexplained integration labels to absorb every disappointing result.

The scope excludes transaction valuation, ownership of statutory consolidation and implementation of a new enterprise system. Planning integration will work through controlled interfaces and existing tools unless a separate change is authorised. Handover ends with an accepted forecast bridge, named assumption owners, a repeatable review calendar and a permanent successor completing two cycles with limited assistance. Any extension requires CFO approval and cannot take total service beyond twenty-four months. The work must leave a functioning leadership process, not an interim-only model that becomes unintelligible after its author departs.

What you will own

• Secure the opening forecast cycle by confirming submission owners, time-sensitive assumptions and unresolved differences, providing the CFO with a reconciled provisional outlook whose limitations are visible before resource decisions are made.
• Establish a combined forecast bridge separating trading performance, perimeter changes and authorised acquisition adjustments, using controller evidence so management cannot treat inconsistent reporting definitions as genuine operational improvement or decline.
• Decide planning-team deployment and calendar priorities within delegation, protecting critical trading information while removing duplicate tasks that consume capacity without improving the combined business's decision evidence.
• Resolve or escalate contested assumptions through a documented finance route, identifying the responsible commercial owner and showing the consequence of each credible view rather than averaging incompatible forecasts into apparent agreement.
• Lead executive planning reviews around actionable alternatives, distinguishing approved resources from integration requests that still require CFO sanction or depend on operating changes outside finance's direct authority.
• Prepare a permanent-successor handover with forecast logic, unresolved risks, assumption ownership and operating calendars, testing transfer through two completed cycles rather than relying on a document archive alone.
• Recommend the final transition decision against defined acceptance evidence, including residual issues and any capped extension request, so the CFO can assess readiness without equating the passage of nine months with successful integration.

Candidate qualifications

• Establish senior FP&A or business-finance leadership with accountable P&L planning in consumer, retail, technology or comparable commercial businesses. Show a finance perimeter transition, management-process combination or multi-business planning change you personally led. A completed acquisition is useful but equivalent integration responsibility is acceptable when it demonstrates decisions, operating continuity and resolution of incompatible finance assumptions at executive level.
• Demonstrate forecasting, variance analysis and management-accounting judgement through relevant professional preparation or equivalent senior practice. Explain a bridge that separated underlying trading from accounting or perimeter changes without overriding the controller. The role needs practical evidence of reconciled information and explicit uncertainty; relabelling two submissions as a combined forecast without testing their definitions does not establish adequate technical depth.
• Have taken command of a planning cycle under time pressure, allocating specialists and resolving disagreements with commercial leaders. Describe what you stabilised first, which improvement you deferred and how you prevented a necessary provisional view from becoming an unchallenged permanent assumption. You must work confidently through delegated decisions while escalating material budget and policy choices to their actual approval owners.
• Be available from 26 October 2026 for the stated weekly commitment and operating travel. Provide evidence of a genuine successor transfer, including a process the successor ran successfully after your intensive involvement ended. The mandate requires confidentiality around the business combination, clear change boundaries and an accountable exit discipline that reduces dependency on the interim leader rather than increasing it through exclusive knowledge.

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 9 October 2026. Mandate reference CVU-INT-2026-IND-242.