Chief Accounting Officer — Cross-Border Reporting Integrity

The mandate

The Chief Accounting Officer will hold the enduring enterprise view of accounting quality where local statutory requirements and group reporting principles intersect. The role is accountable for making policy decisions executable, preserving an intelligible bridge between reporting bases and ensuring that local compliance never becomes an unexplained adjustment at group level. It carries authority over accounting policy, controllership standards and the professional expectations applied to senior controllers.

No organisational profile is offered before candidate-authorised disclosure. The appointee must begin with evidence rather than assumptions: identify all reporting bases, map reserved judgments, assess the quality of conversion entries and determine where apparent differences are genuine accounting differences versus inconsistent application. That diagnosis will anchor a twelve-month improvement agenda agreed with the Group Chief Financial Officer.

In the first quarter, the CAO will issue an escalation standard and establish ownership for each local-to-group bridge. By month six, the highest-risk differences should have documented accounting rationales, accountable reviewers and recurring controls. The first-year destination is a reporting environment in which material movements can be explained without detective reconstruction and policy exceptions are visible before sign-off.

The role may approve interpretations within delegated policy authority, require correction of unsupported accounting and set qualification standards for controllership leaders. Statutory signatories retain their legal duties; tax positions, commercial forecasts and assurance opinions remain outside the CAO’s authority. Where these domains overlap, the CAO must orchestrate a decision without absorbing another owner’s accountability.

This is a leadership-building appointment as much as a technical one. The successful candidate will develop regional controllers who can frame difficult questions, document dissent and communicate with governance bodies directly. The measure of permanence is not the volume of central review, but the spread of sound judgment and consistent challenge across the finance community.

What you will own

• Establish an authoritative inventory of reporting bases, conversion requirements, policy elections and locally reserved statutory judgments.
• Approve a group accounting-policy hierarchy that resolves conflicts between central guidance, local requirements and accepted practice.
• Require material conversion adjustments to carry purpose, authoritative support, calculation evidence, reviewer and reversal logic.
• Convene cross-border judgment reviews and decide matters delegated to the CAO while escalating reserved conclusions with a clear recommendation.
• Set minimum capability and independence expectations for controllers responsible for statutory and group reporting bridges.
• Present quarterly accounting-quality assessments to executive and audit governance, including unresolved differences and potential consequences.
• Reduce recurring unexplained bridge movements through policy clarification, owner intervention and targeted control redesign.
• Commission focused reviews where patterns indicate inconsistent application, while leaving formal assurance opinions to independent providers.

Candidate qualifications

• Show senior accountability for accounting across at least two major reporting frameworks and multiple statutory jurisdictions.
• Provide a complex local-to-group difference you resolved, including why the first proposed bridge was technically or operationally inadequate.
• Demonstrate authority with senior controllers: challenging an established practice and securing correction without centralising every decision.
• Evidence board-level communication of accounting uncertainty, policy choice and financial-statement consequence in concise language.
• Describe a capability model you built for technical accounting and how it changed the quality or timing of escalations.
• Show direct experience governing conversion journals, disclosures and reconciliations rather than relying solely on external advisers.
• Explain how you kept tax, legal, valuation and assurance responsibilities distinct while reaching a coherent reporting conclusion.

Working terms and boundaries

• This permanent appointment carries enterprise accounting-policy authority within the delegation approved by the Group Chief Financial Officer.
• Annual bonus and long-term equity are linked to durable reporting quality, control ownership and leadership succession, not a single filing event.
• Local statutory officers retain legal signatory accountability even where the CAO sets group standards or challenges a conclusion.
• Hybrid working includes in-person governance during significant judgment, quarter-end and talent-review periods.
• Outside directorships, assurance relationships and financial interests require conflict review before restricted information is shared.

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 FNA-PER-2026-MUM-05.