Quarter-End Recovery and Handover Director

The mandate

This interim appointment begins immediately before a demanding quarter-end and exists to restore predictable review, issue resolution and management sign-off. The close completes, but too much work is concentrated in the final review window and recurring questions are answered afresh each quarter. The Director must create control over the critical path while protecting accounting quality under compressed time.

On arrival, the Director will take operating command of the quarter-end timetable, establish a live decision queue and test the readiness of material balance reviews. Authority includes reallocating review coverage, setting daily deadlines, returning incomplete papers and escalating blocked decisions. The Chief Accounting Officer retains approval of significant accounting conclusions and all legal signatories retain their statutory duties.

The first close is diagnostic and corrective. Each late movement will be classified by source: missing input, unowned judgment, control failure, review rework or genuine new fact. Within thirty days after filing, the Director will convert that evidence into a recovery plan with a small number of controlled changes, rather than imposing an untested redesign before the next reporting date.

Two subsequent quarter-end rehearsals or live cycles must demonstrate that review capacity is brought forward, decisions enter governance sooner and handoffs operate without hidden personal dependencies. An internal close owner will be nominated by week six and will progressively assume daily command. The interim will coach through observation and specific feedback, not retain centre-stage until departure.

The assignment ends with accepted handover: a tested timetable, decision protocol, review-capacity plan, unresolved-risk register and evidence that the internal owner has run the process. Long-term systems selection, broader finance restructuring and permanent recruitment are expressly excluded. The Director may document recommendations, but cannot let adjacent work dilute quarter-end recovery.

What you will own

• Take control of the quarter-end command rhythm within five working days and publish a single authoritative critical path.
• Establish a decision queue that records facts outstanding, accounting owner, approver, deadline and consequence of delay.
• Rebalance senior review toward material and judgmental areas while removing duplicative checkpoints from low-risk activity.
• Classify all significant late adjustments after the first close and agree named corrective owners within ten working days.
• Run readiness exercises before subsequent closes to expose evidence, capacity and dependency gaps while time remains to act.
• Transfer command to an internal owner through shadow, reverse-shadow and independently chaired stages with documented assessment.
• Deliver two reporting cycles with fewer late review items and no unresolved high-risk matter concealed by timetable status.
• Maintain focus on close recovery and decline unapproved systems, staffing or process-expansion requests.

Candidate qualifications

• Demonstrate interim leadership through at least one quarter-end recovery where the reporting date could not move.
• Quantify how you shifted review effort earlier and what happened to late adjustments, open decisions and senior overtime.
• Describe a significant conclusion you escalated under pressure without usurping the designated accounting approver.
• Evidence strong understanding of close dependencies, balance substantiation, disclosure review and management representation.
• Show how you identified and prepared a credible internal successor while still personally accountable for delivery.
• Explain an adjacent request you kept out of scope and why accepting it would have endangered the core outcome.
• Provide evidence of calm, concise communication to senior finance and governance stakeholders during a volatile close.

Working terms and boundaries

• The eight-month, five-day-a-week term covers three close interventions, recovery design and structured knowledge transfer.
• The day rate includes normal quarter-end intensity and on-site leadership; exceptional travel requires written authorisation.
• Operating control of the timetable does not confer statutory signatory power or final authority over reserved accounting judgments.
• Extension is exceptional, capped at two months and dependent on evidence that agreed handover criteria remain genuinely incomplete.
• Platform replacement, permanent role selection and enterprise reorganisation are outside the contracted remit.

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 10 October 2026. Mandate reference FNA-INT-2026-FRA-06.