Industrial Acquisition Financial-Evidence Readiness — Consulting Lead

The mandate

Potential acquisitions cannot be screened reliably while financial evidence is assembled differently for each product operation. The narrow problem is diligence readiness, not acquisition negotiation: the project must make cash quality, accounting judgements and operational dependencies inspectable before a live transaction creates deadline pressure. No particular buyer, target or transaction is implied.

The deliverable is an Industrial Financial-Evidence Readiness Book containing reconciled historical bridges, a judgement register, normalisation logic, working-capital definitions and an evidence-room access protocol. Industrial and pharmaceutical examples will be distinguished where regulatory stock, batch release or product obligations affect finance. A single generic checklist will not satisfy the assignment.

Work begins on 19 October 2026. Milestone one, due 18 December, establishes the evidence inventory and a sample cash-quality bridge; milestone two, due 18 February 2027, produces tested normalisation and working-capital modules; milestone three, due 18 April, delivers the complete book, reviewer walkthrough and unresolved-dependency register. The fee is divided 25%, 35% and 40% across accepted outputs.

The finance director and corporate development sponsor jointly accept the project. They must trace sampled figures to original records, reproduce normalisation calculations and distinguish evidenced adjustments from management assertions. Acceptance also requires the internal team to answer a simulated diligence request without external explanation; disagreements become a signed disposition record rather than being hidden in a presentation appendix.

The sponsor provides authorised ledger extracts, contract access, production-cost evidence and named accounting and legal liaisons. Interviews and site work are scheduled through those owners, using restricted data access. Valuation fairness, legal due diligence, commercial forecasting and deal execution are excluded; additions require a priced change request with revised tests, dates and responsibility boundaries.

What you will own

• Catalogue financial-evidence dependencies by source, owner, refresh cycle and permission, identifying gaps before a simulated buyer question exposes them and assigning dated resolution ownership.
• Reconcile operating profit to cash quality through inventory, receivable, provision and one-off adjustments whose calculations remain independently reproducible from controlled source extracts.
• Define working-capital reference logic around operating seasonality and product obligations, documenting why apparently comparable periods may not be economically comparable.
• Construct normalisation papers that separate recurring costs, genuine exceptional events and adjustments unsupported by durable operational evidence, showing the unadjusted result alongside each proposal.
• Test pharmaceutical and industrial stock samples for finance-relevant release, obsolescence and traceability conditions without issuing a technical compliance opinion or overriding qualified production reviewers.
• Stage a diligence-room rehearsal using controlled requests, tracking answer completeness, access permissions and contradictions between financial and operating explanations through a signed defect register.
• Deliver an executable internal maintenance guide and accepted evidence book, retaining unresolved items with owners instead of manufacturing artificial certainty.

Candidate qualifications

• Demonstrate participation at a responsible finance level in acquisition diligence or seller-readiness work for a product business. Show a redacted adjustment that survived challenge and one that was rejected. Candidates must distinguish evidence preparation from investment banking, valuation or legal opinions, and describe the limits of their personal sign-off.
• Provide technical accounting depth in manufacturing cost, provisions, revenue recognition and working-capital quality, with appropriate professional qualification or demonstrably equivalent experience. Explain how a source-system inconsistency altered the diligence conclusion. Familiarity with a branded data room alone is not proof of being able to build an internally coherent financial evidence chain.
• Show a project delivery record in which acceptance depended on reproducible tests rather than elapsed time. Bring an example of milestone rework, the reviewer who required it and the evidence that ultimately closed the issue. The six-month scope requires careful sequencing across finance, operations and legal participants without acquiring line authority over their normal responsibilities.
• Substantiate the ability to handle sensitive transaction information under least-privilege access and avoid suggestive investor narratives. Explain a conflict managed between readiness work and a concurrent prospective transaction. At least ten relevant years must include disciplined financial-evidence preparation, specialist coordination and a completed transfer of methods without claiming investment, valuation or legal authority.

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 13 October 2026. Mandate reference PCT-CON-2026-IND-21.