Associate Director — Small-Cap Acquisition Financial Diligence

The mandate

A transaction-advisory practice needs an associate director to lead financial diligence on small-cap acquisitions where management accounts, owner-related transactions and cash evidence do not always tell the same story. The seat will govern the financial workstream from scoping through defensible findings. It requires more than compiling adjusted EBITDA: the leader must test the basis of claimed normalisations, identify the working-capital pattern and distinguish debt-like exposures from ordinary operating liabilities. Conclusions should remain clear about evidence limitations rather than implying that an incomplete data room can support the same confidence as a fully reconciled record.

Employment is open-ended, with the first twelve-month agenda focused on engagement quality, review discipline and development of seven diligence managers and analysts. The associate director will own selected engagements under the partner's supervision, setting work priorities and reviewing the analytical conclusions before they reach the buyer. Targets may be founder-led service or operating businesses with inconsistent monthly reporting. The method must connect income statements to cash, ledger and supporting records, then explain which findings are recurring, exceptional or unresolved. A persuasive management explanation is a lead to test, not evidence sufficient to clear an adjustment.

The seat has delegated authority over financial-diligence scope, team execution and draft findings within the agreed engagement. The partner approves material scope changes and final reports; buyers retain investment and negotiation decisions. Tax, legal and specialist valuation opinions are excluded from the financial workstream and referred to appointed experts. The associate director must identify interfaces that affect the financial conclusion without presenting those observations as professional opinions in another discipline. Engagement independence, access controls and clear reliance limitations matter because a diligence report is decision support, not an audit opinion or a guarantee of the acquired business's future performance.

Mumbai is the hybrid base with planned target visits and Bengaluru team reviews. The continuing accountability includes fee and capacity planning, staff development and quality across concurrent engagements. Success is evidence-led work that helps a buyer understand the economic issues before committing, while preserving a clear distinction between a finding, an estimate and an unanswered question. The leader should challenge both target optimism and buyer pressure for a convenient conclusion. A difficult transaction timetable cannot justify unsupported normalisation, undisclosed analytical shortcuts or treating an unresolved exposure as immaterial solely because the headline purchase price is attractive.

What you will own

• Scope selected financial-diligence engagements around the target's economic and reporting risks, identifying priority evidence and specialist interfaces before analysts begin a standard worklist that may miss the transaction's material issues.
• Lead earnings-quality analysis with reconciled adjustments, challenging owner-related costs and claimed normalisations so an attractive adjusted result is not accepted solely because management can provide a plausible narrative.
• Establish working-capital and debt-like exposure assessments from period evidence and underlying obligations, distinguishing seasonal operating requirements from exceptional balances while avoiding unsupported assumptions about the eventual transaction mechanism.
• Review the seven-person team's findings and evidence trail, coaching analysts to separate established facts, estimates and unanswered questions before draft conclusions are presented to the partner or buyer.
• Manage target and buyer discussions with disciplined requests and clear limitations, resisting timetable pressure to clear a material issue without evidence while referring tax, legal and valuation opinions to appointed specialists.
• Govern concurrent engagement capacity, scope changes and final-report readiness under partner supervision, ensuring commercial delivery expectations do not erode review quality, confidentiality or the stated financial-workstream boundaries.

Candidate qualifications

• Demonstrate financial-diligence or transaction-advisory work with personal responsibility for analytical conclusions, supported by a Chartered Accountancy qualification. Describe an earnings normalisation you rejected or revised, the records you tested and its consequence for the buyer's understanding. Assurance experience is relevant when it establishes rigorous evidence judgement, but the proof must show how you translated that discipline into transaction-focused financial analysis.
• Show practical working-capital and debt-like exposure reasoning in small or mid-sized operating businesses. Explain a case where monthly reporting or owner-related transactions made a headline balance misleading, and how you reconstructed the relevant pattern. We need clarity about substance, seasonality and limitations rather than a mechanically calculated average that ignores changed activity, exceptional periods or incomplete underlying obligations.
• Evidence leadership and review of engagement teams, including coaching analysts whose initial conclusions were too confident for the available evidence. Describe how you revised the workplan, handled target resistance and retained partner oversight. Strong candidates can manage concurrent deadlines while distinguishing a financial finding from a tax, legal or valuation opinion and keeping investment decisions firmly with the buyer.
• Demonstrate professional judgement under transaction pressure, with a willingness to disclose unresolved matters and constrain reliance when access is incomplete. IFRS capability and business-modelling experience are useful when they clarify accounting or analytical consequences. Protect target information, identify independence concerns and explain an occasion when you refused a convenient conclusion while still giving decision-makers a useful, proportionate account of the financial exposure.

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-PER-2026-IND-050.