Automotive Joint Venture Finance Chief — Partner Governance, Interim

The mandate

An automotive manufacturing joint venture is approaching its next capital and related-party review and needs an executive finance owner. Operating payments continue, but the division between management authority and matters requiring both partners' approval is inconsistently documented. An interim Finance Chief will restore the financial governance of this single manufacturing venture while the partners complete a permanent appointment.

The assignment starts on 26 October 2026 and lasts nine months at five days each week. The first month establishes an agreed financial decision register and verifies the current contribution and banking position. Later cycles test the venture's reporting and approval routines in live operation. A written extension may be agreed if needed, but the overall engagement cannot exceed twenty-four months.

Partner agreement alone does not establish that a proposed charge is economically justified, correctly accounted for or ready to pay. Tooling support, management services and shared procurement can create different interests and evidence standards. The interim will make those facts explicit, coordinating tax and legal specialists where required and preventing an urgent production request from bypassing an unresolved approval or substantiation issue.

The Finance Chief controls finance staff priorities, routine accounting and authorised cash operations within the venture's delegation. Capital calls, distributions, material related-party terms and exceptions to reserved-matter requirements go to the Partner Finance Committee or venture board. Legal interpretation of the shareholder agreement and transfer-pricing opinions remain specialist responsibilities. The role excludes renegotiating ownership percentages, replacing the plant's operating management and undertaking an unrelated enterprise system implementation.

Exit requires a permanent finance chief who can run two partner reporting cycles, reproduce the capital contribution reconciliation and operate the dual-approval controls without interim assistance. Outstanding disagreements must have explicit decision routes and accepted financial consequences. The partners will accept handover through a witnessed reporting and payment-authority rehearsal, ensuring the successor inherits an executable governance model rather than an optimistic summary of unresolved partner conversations.

What you will own

• Establish a financial reserved-matters register with specialist-confirmed approval routes, distinguishing routine management decisions from capital, distribution and related-party matters that require explicit partner or board authority.
• Reconcile capital contributions and authorised funding commitments to banking and entity records, recording unpaid amounts, conditions and disputed facts before management assumes the venture can spend them.
• Govern related-party charge review through contracts, service evidence and approved economic terms, coordinating tax specialists rather than treating a partner invoice as sufficient substantiation for payment.
• Decide immediate payment-control repairs within the existing delegation, ensuring dual authorisation remains workable during absence or transition without allowing shared access to erase accountability.
• Build a partner reporting bridge that reconciles common financial facts to each partner's required presentation, explaining differences without creating inconsistent underlying accounting positions for the same venture.
• Lead monthly governance exception reviews with the Managing Director, showing the operating consequence of delayed partner decisions and preserving a clear escalation trail for material disagreements.
• Transfer the finance seat through successor-operated reporting and authority rehearsals, obtaining partner acceptance of residual issues, named owners and the controls that will continue after interim access ends.

Candidate qualifications

• Senior manufacturing finance or controlling experience should include joint ventures, multi-stakeholder governance or a comparably constrained executive approval environment. Describe a financial decision where management preference did not provide sufficient authority, the governance route established and how you maintained operating continuity. Direct venture experience is valuable, but evidence of equivalent partner-facing complexity can establish the necessary judgement.
• Bring strong accounting, funding and related-party financial analysis. Explain how you verified a contribution or service charge, separated agreed facts from unresolved commercial or legal questions and made the financial consequence visible to decision makers. The role requires disciplined substantiation and specialist coordination, not an assumption that either partner's seniority can resolve an accounting or contractual uncertainty.
• Show practical team leadership through changing banking and approval arrangements. You should have designed controls that preserve segregation and remain operable under time pressure, together with reliable reporting reconciliation. Provide an example where an inherited access or authority convention was unsafe, the repair made and the test used to prove essential payments could continue under the approved control.
• Establish five-day availability for the start date and willingness to disclose commitments affecting executive ownership. Demonstrate a structured finance handover to an incoming controller or chief, including witnessed operation and accepted residual exceptions. The partners expect calm, neutral financial judgement and clear communication of contested matters without advocacy for one shareholder's preferred accounting or funding result.

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 CVU-INT-2026-IND-058.