Board Finance Adviser — Professional-Services Minority Investment Discipline

The mandate

A professional-services investment board repeatedly returns to the same question: whether minority capital can generate a durable return when client relationships, delivery quality and profit extraction remain concentrated in a few partners. The board has transaction advisers, but it lacks a continuing finance voice experienced in the operating realities behind service-company earnings. This nine-month advisory engagement begins on 26 October 2026 and will sharpen investment judgement across the pipeline rather than advocate completion of any particular acquisition or capital commitment.

The adviser will examine how reported earnings convert into cash available to an outside investor after partner remuneration, retained working capital and reinvestment obligations. Particular attention goes to apparently normal adjustments that effectively assume founders will continue delivering below-market effort after receiving proceeds. You will help the committee compare governance protections with actual enforceability and management behaviour. The discussion must separate a desirable contractual right from a mechanism that can genuinely reveal deteriorating economics before a minority investor loses practical influence.

Five advisory days are reserved each month for two working sessions, written challenge notes and focused management conversations. One quarterly investment-committee meeting is included in the retainer, not charged again; additional attendance requires advance agreement. Requests receive acknowledgement within one business day and a substantive response within three business days once the relevant pack is complete. Renewal after nine months is solely the committee chair's recommendation subject to board approval; no automatic extension or board appointment is included.

The adviser has no line authority and no executive responsibility. Existing directors decide investments, employees conduct diligence and legal counsel determines contractual sufficiency. Up to two non-competing retained engagements may run concurrently if the reserved capacity remains available. Current or proposed work for a target, a bidding investor or a directly competing services portfolio must be disclosed before access; agreed recusals, information barriers or termination protect the engagement. The role offers specialist influence without transferring a director's fiduciary responsibilities or the investment team's execution obligations.

What you will own

• Challenge earnings-normalisation assumptions concerning partner delivery, remuneration and deferred hiring, asking the committee to price the cost of maintaining service capacity after founders monetise part of their ownership.
• Test the cash-conversion evidence behind investment proposals by examining unbilled work, disputed receivables and customer concentration, distinguishing temporary timing effects from structural demands for repeated capital injections.
• Recommend minority reporting protections that reveal drawings, related-party expenditure and working-capital deterioration early, explaining which proposed rights lack the information or practical remedies needed to influence outcomes.
• Press investment principals on founder-retention assumptions using client ownership, team depth and successor evidence, identifying cases where a financial model depends on behaviour the transaction terms do not secure.
• Shape a committee comparison of return scenarios that includes reinvestment, partner settlements and downside collection patterns, avoiding the false precision of a single exit multiple applied to uncertain distributable cash.
• Review diligence questions for their ability to distinguish sustainable service margin from owner subsidy, helping internal teams seek evidence without taking over target negotiations or endorsing legal conclusions.
• Counsel the chair on escalation of unresolved economic disagreements, making the alternative of deferring or declining an investment visible when required protections cannot be demonstrated before approval.

Candidate qualifications

• Bring eighteen to twenty-two years of senior finance experience with personal exposure to professional-services ownership, partner economics or mid-market investment assessment. Describe a case in which apparently sound adjusted earnings concealed a cash or capacity problem, and explain the challenge you raised before investment terms were settled rather than after value had already been impaired.
• Demonstrate accounting judgement strong enough to interrogate normalisation, owner remuneration, client advances and related-party arrangements without relying on generic diligence checklists. Professional accounting standing is expected. You should recognise the limits of financial review and seek appropriate legal or tax interpretation where a minority protection depends on enforceability rather than the attractiveness of its drafted wording.
• Evidence constructive board or owner advisory work where you influenced a decision without managing the execution team. Show how you translated an operational concern into a documented economic question, preserved disagreement in the committee record and remained useful when directors chose a different risk appetite. Transaction advocacy or an expectation of deal-linked remuneration would undermine this independent perspective.
• Reserve five days each month and the included quarterly meeting, with the judgement to manage several confidential information sets safely. Disclose investment, board, consulting and commercial relationships that could compromise neutrality, including indirect interests in target businesses. Experience in recusal and secure information handling matters as much as willingness to accept a formal confidentiality undertaking.

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 12 October 2026. Mandate reference CVU-ADV-2026-IND-005.