Interim Finance Director — Acquired Shared-Services Close Recovery

The mandate

A shared-services organisation acquired earlier this year is being integrated, and several entity controllers and service teams disagree about ownership of closing evidence. An interim director is required from 26 October 2026 for nine months to take executive responsibility for the finance-service perimeter. The immediate exposure is late or unsupported close activity, particularly intercompany balances and transferred AP/AR responsibilities. Recovery requires accountable delivery across the acquired service organisation, with explicit acceptance by the controllers who retain entity-level financial responsibilities.

During the first fortnight the director will confirm closing obligations, material balance owners and the issue routes that survived the acquisition. Thirty-two service professionals need a workable operating rhythm, with priority given to unresolved intercompany positions, unsupported journals and tasks that were handed over without acceptance. Close speed matters only after the evidence perimeter is understood. The director must distinguish work that the centre should perform from decisions that belong to an entity controller, so recovery does not accidentally transfer statutory judgement into a transaction-service team without the appropriate delegation.

The director may reprioritise finance-service work, approve journals within agreed limits, allocate team capacity and enforce service-owner acceptance before an activity is marked complete. Accounting-policy changes, material write-offs and integration funding require group-controller or CFO approval. ERP implementation, workforce restructuring and acquisition purchase-price accounting are outside the assignment. Technology and HR partners remain responsible for their programmes. This boundary allows a decisive recovery leader to require missing inputs and escalate failed dependencies without becoming the sponsor of every unfinished integration activity or overriding entity-controller accountability.

Five days weekly are reserved onsite in Pune, with limited Bengaluru coordination travel. The fixed term has no extension and finishes on 26 July 2027. A permanent director search runs in parallel, with transfer planned after three consecutive evidence-supported closes, agreed intercompany ownership and a tested exception route. The successor must independently run a close rehearsal and explain remaining material issues before final handover. A clean tracker alone will not establish completion if analysts still need the interim director's personal intervention to locate evidence or decide which controller should resolve a balance.

What you will own

• Confirm the acquired finance-service perimeter and entity-controller responsibilities during the first fortnight, documenting accepted tasks and approval routes before team capacity is committed to work that belongs elsewhere.
• Take control of the close recovery calendar with material-balance prioritisation, assigning accountable owners to unsupported journals and missed evidence rather than treating every late task as an equivalent operational exception.
• Enforce intercompany reconciliation and counterparty escalation across the service centre and group entities, distinguishing genuine accounting disagreements from incomplete supporting records and tracking the proper controller's decision.
• Allocate the thirty-two-person team's capacity across close and AP/AR obligations, correcting supervisory gaps and coaching managers to require source evidence before accepting a transferred process as operationally complete.
• Approve delegated close adjustments and service-control changes with an auditable rationale, escalating policy changes and material write-offs instead of using emergency authority to bypass normal financial governance.
• Transfer the operating rhythm to the permanent successor through three supported closes and an independently led rehearsal, retaining explicit ownership for unresolved issues so the handover does not depend on undocumented relationships.

Candidate qualifications

• Show direct leadership of controllership or finance shared services through acquisition, organisational transfer or another material change in process ownership. Describe the close obligations you personally recovered and how you settled the division of responsibility with entity controllers. Evidence must include approval boundaries and repeatable delivery, rather than a general integration programme in which someone else owned financial decisions.
• Bring twelve to eighteen years of finance experience with Chartered Accountancy training and significant AP/AR, intercompany or close exposure. Explain a material reconciliation disagreement where the right response was not an immediate balancing entry. We need confidence in accounting substance, evidence quality and escalation, including the ability to distinguish a service-process failure from a policy decision reserved for the group controller.
• Be available for an onsite start on 26 October 2026 and five days weekly throughout the fixed nine-month assignment. Demonstrate how you establish control in the first two weeks without attempting to redesign every process simultaneously. Your approach should prioritise financial exposure, protect required approvals and give staff a clear route for dependencies that the interim seat cannot resolve alone.
• Evidence a completed leadership handover in which the successor proved practical independence. Describe the rehearsal or live-cycle test, the residual issues disclosed and the evidence that delivery continued after your departure. Strong candidates can develop managers during a recovery, maintain a constructive relationship with entity controllers and resist an attractive technology or staffing solution when that decision belongs to a separate sponsor.

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-039.