Regional Group Chief Financial Officer — Retail and Hospitality Holdings

The mandate

A regional holding group operates retail and hospitality businesses alongside companies that own or lease their premises. Operating earnings do not consistently reveal refurbishment commitments, lease guarantees or the cash retained at property level. The regional group CFO will own a complete financial view across that structure, preventing decisions about stores, hotel assets and funding from being made as though each sat in an independent business with no claim on the others.

Employment is open-ended, with an initial two-year agenda to align holding-company finance, establish a credible obligation forecast and strengthen location-level investment decisions. Fifty-eight finance professionals report through operating and property-company heads. The leader is based in Mumbai and travels for selected regional board and asset reviews. The remit combines regional ownership of accounts and capital with direct oversight of the finance leaders responsible for each operating model.

Authority includes setting financial standards, prioritising approved refurbishment funding and requiring complete location economics before finance endorsement. New property disposals, material lease guarantees and changes to financing or shareholder distributions require board decisions. Hotel operations, retail merchandising and professional property valuation remain with their owners. The CFO must assess the cash consequences of those activities without substituting a financial preference for an operational judgement or an independent technical valuation.

The board expects a reconciled picture of recurring operating cash after the expenditure needed to keep assets commercially viable. Store closures or hotel renovations should expose termination, downtime and reinstatement costs rather than promise savings from rent alone. The role excludes operating hotels, choosing merchandise and providing real-estate brokerage. Continuing finance accountability includes reporting, funding, audit coordination and the financial discipline of asset decisions after the first restructuring of the obligation record is complete.

What you will own

• Build a regional obligation schedule covering leases, guarantees, refurbishment commitments and financing payments, reconciling entity records so the board can see the complete cash consequence of retaining, renovating or exiting each material location.
• Decide the order of approved refurbishment funding using operating evidence, downtime exposure and asset condition inputs, distinguishing essential reinvestment from expansion spending whose demand or return assumptions remain uncertain.
• Govern location-level financial reviews that connect store or hotel contribution to property costs and required renewal expenditure, preventing a profitable operating view from relying on unrecognised support elsewhere in the structure.
• Lead consolidated accounts and audit preparation across operating and holding entities, maintaining clear evidence for leases, impairment judgements, cross-company charges and the use of professional valuation conclusions.
• Assess proposed location exits with legal and operational specialists, presenting termination, reinstatement, staffing and remaining asset obligations so directors understand the difference between an accounting loss and the cash needed to change course.
• Shape regional debt and distribution recommendations around usable cash and downside asset performance, identifying restrictions that make a reported holding-company balance unavailable for shareholder payments or new investment.
• Develop finance heads who can challenge location assumptions, preserve independent approvals and communicate emerging obligations early, creating a common regional review discipline without removing their company-specific accountability.

Candidate qualifications

• Bring 22–28 years in finance with prior group CFO or comparable multi-company leadership across retail, hospitality, real estate or a diversified portfolio containing these business models. Show a decision where the relationship between an operating entity and its property or holding structure materially changed the financial recommendation. Seniority must be evidenced through accounts, capital and executive responsibility rather than title alone.
• Demonstrate rigorous judgement in lease obligations, refurbishment investment, cash forecasting and asset-related financial reporting. Explain a location decision whose apparent savings changed after downtime or continuing commitments were included. A recognised accounting or management-accounting qualification is required, supported by practical ability to work with professional valuers and qualified legal advisers without presenting their technical conclusions as your own independent certification.
• Have raised or managed significant debt and equity funding and communicated its conditions to directors. Evidence should include a distribution or investment recommendation you changed because cash was restricted, obligations were understated or a downside scenario weakened covenant capacity. You must distinguish available funding from nominal facility size and maintain an auditable path from assumptions to the recommendation.
• Have led operating-company finance heads through conflicting local and regional priorities. Describe how you established common review standards while preserving legitimate differences between retail, hospitality and property accounts. The role requires direct engagement with asset and operating leaders, discretion around financing and transactions, and the willingness to state when an attractive proposal depends on reinvestment or closure costs that management has not yet funded.

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-226.