Chief Financial Officer, Corporate Real Estate Services — Contract Recovery Discipline

The mandate

A corporate real-estate services company manages client assignments that combine service fees, reimbursable expenditure and separately authorised property work. Operating teams often progress useful work before the commercial evidence is complete, leaving finance to decide later whether costs can legitimately be recovered. The CFO will own the company's complete finance function and establish discipline over those rights. The central task is to make the relationship among service delivery, approved scope and financial recovery dependable without turning finance into the property manager or assuming every client-related payment creates earned income.

Employment is open-ended, with an initial eighteen-month agenda covering recovery evidence, reliable contract reporting and stronger operating finance. Twenty-one finance professionals report within the company, working with client-account and property-service leaders. Mumbai is the hybrid base, with regular reviews across Bengaluru and Delhi NCR operations. Qualified accounting owners support financial treatment under applicable reporting frameworks. The CFO accepts entity-level accountability for accounts, budgets and cash while respecting the contractual and operational responsibilities of the people managing properties and client relationships.

The CFO may set financial evidence standards, approve routine expenditure within delegation and decide finance escalation of unsupported recoveries. Material contract changes, client settlements and investment commitments require authorised commercial or board approval, with legal review where needed. Service leaders retain execution. Finance must identify whether an expense is authorised, recoverable and evidenced, treating those as separate questions. Client advances, reimbursement claims and the company's own operating funds must remain distinguishable even when they share a busy operational reporting process.

The permanent scope includes financial reporting, working-capital governance and financial challenge of new assignments. It excludes property valuation, legal representation and facilities-operation ownership. Directors expect a clear account of verified earnings and recoveries still dependent on client approval or disputed evidence. The CFO should improve the decisions made before expenditure, not merely increase collection pressure afterward. A successful finance organisation can explain why a claim is delayed, which record or commercial action would resolve it and when a proposed service expansion would increase financial exposure faster than its verified fee contribution.

What you will own

• Establish a contract recovery register linking authorised scope, incurred expenditure and supporting client evidence, identifying where a recorded claim depends on an unresolved right rather than merely an invoice not yet processed.
• Govern management reporting of fees, reimbursements and client-funded activity through reconciled definitions, preserving controller conclusions so gross expenditure handled for clients cannot inflate the apparent commercial performance of the services company.
• Decide routine operating finance priorities within delegation, requiring material unsupported recovery or disputed expenditure to follow an accountable commercial and legal route before additional obligations are accepted.
• Challenge new-assignment economics with service and client-account leaders, examining payment terms, change control and evidence requirements alongside expected fees so finance identifies exposure before an attractive contract becomes operationally embedded.
• Lead close, audit coordination and working-capital reviews with qualified accounting owners, distinguishing genuine processing delays from disputed substance and using appropriate evidence for financial treatment while recovery remains uncertain.
• Present client concentration and unresolved financial rights to executive governance, explaining credible resolution alternatives without assuming authority to settle claims or alter property-service commitments unilaterally.
• Develop finance managers who can engage clients and operating teams constructively, maintain clear fund and claim records and resolve recurring evidence gaps without making every routine expense depend on CFO intervention.

Candidate qualifications

• Bring twenty-two to twenty-eight years in finance with substantial senior responsibility in real-estate services, technology, engineering services or another contract-led operating company. Demonstrate deputy-CFO, entity finance or equivalent leadership with owned reporting and commercial decisions. Show a recoverable-cost or contract-right issue you resolved by examining the underlying evidence, not merely an improvement in debtor days attributed to a wider collection campaign.
• Have recognised accounting or management-accounting preparation and strong applied reporting knowledge. Explain how service fees, reimbursement claims and funds held or handled for clients affected financial presentation and management interpretation. You must obtain qualified technical conclusions when arrangements are complex, preserving the distinction between operational activity and company revenue without treating a useful management measure as automatic authority for a statutory entry.
• Have worked with client-account, service and legal owners when work proceeded outside clearly approved scope. Describe how you changed pre-expenditure evidence or escalation without preventing legitimate urgent service. The CFO must understand contract consequences and working-capital exposure, while leaving property valuation, legal advice and delivery commitments with the professionals authorised and competent to own them.
• Have developed finance professionals through demanding close and client-review cycles, with transparent executive communication over uncomfortable claims or obligations. Evidence should include clear fund ownership, disciplined commercial escalation and a process others could sustain. The role requires planned operating travel and confidentiality around client information. Financial leadership should improve the quality of decisions before costs arise, rather than depend permanently on senior intervention after a dispute has become unavoidable.

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-PER-2026-IND-252.