Post-Merger Finance Integration Leader — Industrial Automation

The mandate

The acquired division's finance director left ten days after completion when disagreement over purchase-accounting decisions and plant-cost transparency became public inside the integration team. Monthly closes now produce competing margin views, synergy claims lack accountable baselines, and country controllers are waiting for an executive ruling on which policies and decision forums survive.

The appointee must arrive within three weeks and lead the finance integration for fourteen months, including the first audited year-end as a combined group. The future regional finance structure will be selected in month nine, followed by a permanent appointment and six-week transfer; an extension is possible only if regulatory clearance delays the final legal-entity merger, not because integration outputs remain incomplete.

The seat is ready to hand over when the combined close consistently finishes by business day five, purchase-accounting positions are audit-cleared, synergy results reconcile to the approved baseline, all countries operate the same delegation and control calendar, and the permanent leader has owned one forecast and one Steering Board cycle. Staff sentiment or system uniformity is not a substitute for these conditions.

The interim can set finance policy, choose the integration sequence, stop unsupported synergy reporting, move temporary resources and approve integration expenditure within the €8 million envelope. The board retains decisions on plant closure, legal-entity merger, permanent director appointments, debt refinancing and any forecast revision above €25 million; the appointee cannot renegotiate the acquisition agreement or remove works-council protections.

A groupwide ERP migration, commercial-brand consolidation and engineering-portfolio rationalisation are excluded. Tax litigation and customer-contract novation remain with their specialist owners, although their financial consequences belong in the integration view. This is a disciplined finance operating-model mandate, not authority to reopen the deal thesis or absorb every post-close concern.

Why this seat is open

The immediate post-close resignation removed the one executive expected to bridge the buyer's control model and the acquired division's operating knowledge. Existing country controllers are credible but each is party to unresolved policy and resource disputes. The group needs a neutral leader who can make finite integration decisions, preserve audit integrity and prepare a permanent regional structure.

What you will own

• Issue the combined finance design covering decision rights, policy hierarchy, controller accountabilities, close governance and escalation across four countries.
• Resolve purchase-accounting judgments and maintain an audit-ready register linking valuation inputs, management assumptions, approvals and subsequent true-ups.
• Establish the synergy baseline at initiative and cost-centre level, rejecting benefits without a causal bridge, accountable owner and cash or earnings evidence.
• Compress the consolidated close through dependency sequencing, standard reconciliations and a single late-adjustment threshold rather than blunt calendar mandates.
• Decide which shared-service migrations proceed, pause or remain local after assessing control readiness, language need, business continuity and transition capacity.
• Chair monthly finance-integration boards that record resource trades, country exceptions, forecast consequences and matters reserved for the group board.
• Induct the permanent leader with an accepted operating manual, talent map, unresolved judgment log, audited baseline and two-cycle forward agenda.

Candidate qualifications

• Served as group finance integration director, regional CFO or divisional CFO through a completed European acquisition of comparable operational complexity.
• Can evidence a post-close integration where purchase accounting, first-year audit and management reporting were stabilised under one accountable programme.
• Established and defended a synergy baseline that distinguished run-rate, in-year, cash, avoidance and revenue benefits without double counting.
• Led finance teams across Germany, France and Central Europe with practical understanding of co-determination, statutory reporting and local-controller obligations.
• Made sequenced shared-service and systems decisions while protecting close continuity rather than imposing a uniform target model regardless of readiness.
• Handed an integration office into a durable regional finance organisation with measured close, control and forecasting performance after departure.

Non-negotiables

• Available within three weeks for the Frankfurt-centred schedule and repeated travel to Lyon and Warsaw.
• No current board, advisory or investment conflict involving a direct industrial-automation competitor or either transaction adviser.
• Will own executive rulings and audit representations within delegated limits instead of operating as a coordination-only programme lead.
• Fluent professional English is required; evidence of leading through German or French employee-representation processes is mandatory.

1. 49 words maximum. Give your earliest start date and the most complex first-year post-merger audit you personally governed.
2. 49 words maximum. What evidence caused you to reject or reduce a claimed integration synergy despite sponsor pressure?
3. 49 words maximum. Which finance process would you integrate last across these countries, and what readiness test would govern that choice?