Interim Finance Director — Logistics Acquisition Reporting

The mandate

A recently acquired logistics operation is between transaction close and its first group reporting cycle and needs an executive finance owner. Opening balances, local billing adjustments and acquisition-date cut-offs are being handled by capable staff without an executive decision owner. The interim director will hold that accountability, preventing uncertain legacy items from becoming unexplained consolidation differences or unexamined adjustments to future operating performance.

The intended start is 26 October 2026, with a nine-month executive assignment and a permanent director search proceeding separately. Any extension must be approved in writing and cannot take the combined engagement beyond 24 months. The successor should receive reconciled opening balances, three repeatable monthly consolidation cycles and an issue register that clearly separates resolved accounting conclusions from matters still awaiting specialist or transaction-document evidence.

The director may assign close responsibilities, approve supported journals within the group delegation and settle routine customer account adjustments up to ₹15 lakh. Purchase-price changes, disputed seller claims, permanent restructuring and commitments outside approved budgets stay with the CFO or board. The role must document why a classification is appropriate rather than allowing pressure to complete integration to conceal uncertainty about the acquisition perimeter.

Twenty-two local finance staff remain responsible for transactions, supported by the group consolidation team and external technical advisers where needed. Fleet replacement, customer repricing and tax litigation are excluded. The director's handover is complete only when the permanent appointee can reproduce the consolidation bridge, identify unresolved exposures without oral explanation and demonstrate the approval trail for material opening-balance and subsequent-period entries.

What you will own

• Establish the acquired-entity reporting perimeter from transaction documents, legal entity records and operating balances, producing a signed mapping that consolidation staff can use without guessing which legacy activity belongs inside the group.
• Decide the treatment and escalation of opening-balance exceptions, obtaining technical support where required and preserving a traceable distinction between factual correction, accounting judgement and a potential seller dispute.
• Allocate monthly close authority across local managers, setting journal approval limits and evidence standards that stop unsupported acquisition adjustments from being passed through routine operating results.
• Reconcile billing and receivables cut-offs against the acquisition date, separating post-close service delivery from legacy settlement issues and giving commercial teams a documented route for resolving customer disagreements.
• Lead three consecutive consolidation rehearsals with group finance, proving that reporting packs, intercompany balances and material account movements reconcile under normal staffing rather than a temporary emergency task force.
• Transfer a complete finance control book to the successor, including unresolved issue ownership, specialist advice references, recurring deadlines and a practical demonstration of how the next reporting cycle will be executed.

Candidate qualifications

• Bring an 18–22-year finance background with executive or deputy executive control of reporting in a logistics, trade or service business. Evidence personally accountable multi-entity reporting, operational finance cutover or a material entity-boundary change. Explain how you stabilised reconciliations and decision ownership, which conclusions you could authorise and which required the CFO or specialist review.
• Demonstrate command of opening-balance reconciliation, cut-off analysis, intercompany mapping and consolidation bridges. Evidence should show how you distinguished a legacy customer settlement from new-period revenue and how you recorded uncertainty when transaction terms did not support an immediate conclusion. Finance qualifications or equivalent rigorous experience must underpin that judgement.
• Have led operational accounting teams under time pressure without replacing control with undocumented executive instruction. Show a close recovery where journal authority, review evidence and manager capability improved together. The assignment requires confidence challenging a convenient adjustment even when it would help meet a reporting deadline or make the acquired business appear more profitable.
• Be available for an onsite start on the stated date and sustained five-day weekly executive coverage. Demonstrate a controlled transfer of reporting responsibility: the incoming leader must have inherited usable reconciliations, decision logs and clearly assigned residual issues. Apply that evidence to the acquisition handover, including how specialist advice and unresolved transaction matters will remain accessible after your exit.

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-095.