Finance Chief, Construction Services Separation — Interim

The mandate

A construction technical services carve-out has created a finance leadership gap because the parent CFO and shared treasury team are remaining with the seller. Two operating entities must become independently governable while continuing live project delivery. The interim Finance Chief takes executive responsibility for the separated finance perimeter, not merely coordination of a transition checklist prepared by advisers.

The assignment starts on 26 October 2026 for twelve months, while a permanent platform CFO is recruited. Early work protects payroll, supplier payment and project banking continuity; later stages establish a clean opening financial position and remove critical dependency on parent finance services. Extension is possible only through written agreement and cannot take total engagement duration beyond twenty-four months.

Handover is complete when the standalone finance team has executed two controlled monthly closes, demonstrated an independently funded cash forecast and transferred banking authority and reporting ownership to the permanent CFO. Residual transition services must have named owners, exit dates and approved costs. A technically separated ledger is insufficient if the team still needs parent staff to explain its material balances or initiate essential payments.

The interim may decide finance work allocation, operational cash priorities and control repairs within the approved separation budget. New borrowing, disputed opening adjustments, material changes to transition agreements and permanent organisational restructuring require the Transition Steering Committee or board. Contract novations, legal ownership conclusions and tax positions remain with qualified advisers and authorised executives, informed by the finance evidence the role establishes.

The remit excludes reengineering project delivery, replacing every inherited finance system and renegotiating unrelated historical contract claims. Limited configuration changes may be necessary for control independence, but the assignment must not become an unrestricted technology programme. The central obligation is a viable finance function with transparent inherited exposures and an accountable successor, not an artificially clean story about the carve-out.

What you will own

• Establish the separated finance perimeter through entity, account and contract evidence, distinguishing balances and obligations transferred with the business from services temporarily retained by the parent.
• Decide immediate finance continuity controls for banking instructions, payroll and critical suppliers, documenting authority changes before inherited access arrangements are withdrawn or allowed to persist without ownership.
• Produce an opening balance and working capital challenge pack, escalating disputed allocations through the agreed transition route rather than quietly embedding them in future project forecasts.
• Build a standalone cash forecast and funding proposal that reflects project certification, retention and transition costs, showing the board where parent support has previously obscured the true liquidity requirement.
• Govern transition service exit decisions through operating tests, requiring finance owners to demonstrate independent performance before removing services whose absence would compromise close or payment control.
• Lead the finance team's close and reporting stabilisation, assigning reconciliations to named owners and documenting unresolved inherited exposures without permitting unsupported adjustments to erase them.
• Transfer the executive perimeter through successor-led close and liquidity rehearsals, obtaining committee acceptance of outstanding dependencies, authorised exceptions and the final handover conditions.

Candidate qualifications

• Demonstrate CFO or finance-chief leadership in a carve-out, separation or comparable standalone transition involving project-intensive businesses. Describe a dependency that threatened operational continuity, the control you installed and the evidence used to determine that the new finance function could operate independently rather than merely meet a legal separation date.
• Bring strong opening balance, working capital and treasury judgement under incomplete historical evidence. Explain how you challenged parent allocations, separated undisputed records from negotiation issues and prevented a transaction disagreement from contaminating routine financial reporting. Relevant experience includes preserving an auditable decision trail while maintaining live payment and close obligations.
• Show practical leadership of finance teams through changing authority and service arrangements. You should have designed transition-service exit tests, clarified banking permissions and retained specialist review for legal or tax conclusions. The seat requires executive control of finance operations, alongside restraint when a disputed ownership question exceeds the evidence or delegation available.
• Establish availability for sustained five-day ownership and a disciplined permanent-successor handover. Give evidence of staged transfer, owner-operated rehearsals and transparent residual issue acceptance. Experience with engineering or construction contract cash is important because apparent accounting independence does not establish the liquidity needed to support ongoing delivery commitments.

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 14 October 2026. Mandate reference CVU-INT-2026-IND-191.