Japan and Korea Regional Finance Director

The mandate

The Japan and Korea Regional Finance Director will own durable performance, controllership coordination and investment challenge across two distinct market environments. The leader must create comparable decision evidence without pretending commercial drivers, statutory responsibilities or planning behaviours are identical.

The first 100 days will establish market driver bridges, material balance and control exposures, capital commitments and finance capability risks. By month six, a joint regional review should replace parallel narrative updates while preserving country accountability. By month twelve, forecast bias, unresolved cross-market dependencies and unsupported investment assumptions should be measurably lower.

The director may set regional review standards, return incomplete forecasts, require recovery plans and recommend capital sequence. Country controllers retain statutory and signing responsibility; market executives own commercial decisions; group forums approve major investment. The role must make disagreement visible rather than negotiate a lowest-common-denominator forecast.

A central requirement is bilingual decision-making in the broad leadership sense: translating local evidence and context into group choices, then translating group decisions into locally executable consequences. The director will test whether regional initiatives create value in each market after currency, timing, capacity and adoption are considered.

Selected pricing, investment and cost actions will undergo post-decision review. Original assumptions will be retained, subsequent operating evidence traced and sound judgement under uncertainty separated from avoidable bias. Learning must alter the next decision standard rather than remain a retrospective explanation.

The permanent legacy should include credible deputies in both markets, documented decision routes and finance leaders who can challenge one another constructively. Regional cohesion must not depend on constant intervention from Tokyo.

The first-year operating model will include quarterly cross-market case reviews, rotating ownership of regional analysis and thresholds for matters requiring group attention. Finance talent will be assessed on the decisions and evidence it improves, not presentation fluency. Unresolved disagreements remain visible with a final owner and date.

What you will own

• Create comparable driver, margin, cash and capital bridges with local assumptions explicitly retained.
• Establish one regional review for performance, controls, investment and talent decisions.
• Exercise authority to return unsupported plans and require evidence-led recovery actions.
• Separate currency, timing, perimeter and one-off effects from operating performance.
• Resolve cross-market dependencies through named decisions, owners and dates.
• Improve capital cases through downside, capacity, reversibility and adoption tests.
• Build country deputies and reciprocal challenge across Japan and Korea finance teams.
• Publish a first-year regional outcome account reconciled to original commitments.

Candidate qualifications

• Show senior finance leadership across Japan and Korea or comparably distinct markets.
• Provide a case where local context changed a group interpretation without weakening comparability.
• Demonstrate forecast challenge and capital discipline under currency and market uncertainty.
• Evidence respect for country statutory authority while exercising regional performance leadership.
• Describe a cross-market initiative whose benefits changed after adoption or capacity testing.
• Show succession built in both markets rather than concentrated at regional headquarters.

Working terms and boundaries

• This is a full-time permanent role owning regional finance performance, coordination and capability.
• Country signing, commercial execution and final group capital approval remain separately accountable.
• The director may return evidence but cannot override statutory or approved investment governance.
• First-year performance covers forecast integrity, exposure resolution, capital quality and succession.
• Long-term incentives follow applicable approval and vesting rules.

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 RHF-PER-2026-TYO-91.