M&A Tax Diligence and Decision Governance Director

The mandate

This Director will own the tax decision discipline applied to acquisitions, disposals, investments and joint arrangements. The enduring challenge is to move from issue lists to choices: which exposure changes value, which can be protected contractually, which needs structural action, and which must be accepted by the proper authority. The seat is accountable for the tax reasoning and governance, not for sponsoring a transaction.

In the first four months, the Director will establish a risk taxonomy, diligence scope protocol, data-request logic and decision record that work across different deal types and jurisdictions. Advice must distinguish verified fact, management representation, technical interpretation, quantified range and execution dependency. Material issues should reach valuation, documentation and integration owners early enough to influence their work.

The role can approve tax diligence scope within delegation, direct specialist review, reject conclusions without sufficient facts and make recommendations to reserved decision makers. It cannot approve transaction price, sign legal agreements, waive conditions or accept tax risk assigned to a board or investment authority. Post-close tax implementation remains with named owners unless separately placed under this portfolio.

By month twelve, tax findings should be traceable to valuation treatment, contractual response, pre-close action, integration obligation or explicit acceptance. Repeat diligence questions should use a governed evidence base, adviser work should be comparable, and two senior team members should be ready to lead complex decisions without waiting for the Director to translate every technical point.

What you will own

• Publish a transaction-tax diligence standard that scales scope by deal form, jurisdiction, materiality, uncertainty, information access and decision timetable.
• Require every significant finding to state verified facts, missing evidence, legal analysis, exposure range, recurrence, mitigation and accountable decision owner.
• Establish an issue-to-value bridge that prevents gross theoretical exposure from entering pricing without probability, timing and remedy analysis.
• Direct deeper review of tax attributes, residence, permanent establishments, transfer pricing, withholding, financing, compliance and inherited controversy where risk warrants.
• Determine when specialist advice or vendor evidence is insufficient and recommend a condition, indemnity, price treatment, remediation or conscious acceptance.
• Maintain a decision register connecting tax findings to valuation, transaction documents, pre-close obligations and post-close control owners.
• Conduct post-decision reviews that compare diligence assumptions with discovered facts and improve future scope rather than allocating blame.
• Build internal leaders capable of framing and defending tax choices before investment and board governance.

Candidate qualifications

• At least 17 years in international and transaction tax, including Director-level leadership of complex buy-side, sell-side or joint-investment diligence.
• A finding you personally converted from technical exposure into a different valuation, contractual or walk-away decision, with quantified reasoning.
• Breadth across corporate tax, attributes, financing, withholding, transfer pricing, controversy and tax accounting sufficient to integrate specialist conclusions.
• Evidence of narrowing an exaggerated exposure range after separating legal possibility, facts, probability, timing and available remedy.
• Experience controlling external advisers through risk-led scopes, factual assumptions, quality review and comparable decision outputs.
• A case where you refused to endorse a transaction recommendation because critical tax facts remained unavailable, including the reserved decision response.
• Demonstrated development of transaction-tax leaders who can operate with commercial pace without weakening evidence standards.

Working terms and boundaries

• The position is permanent and full time, with first-year gates at protocol approval, use on live decisions and the first post-decision learning cycle.
• The Director owns diligence standards and tax recommendations; valuation, transaction approval, legal signature and reserved risk acceptance remain elsewhere.
• Fixed annual pay, target incentive and conditional performance shares constitute the published remuneration and follow ordinary governance.
• Hybrid work will flex around decision timetables, with travel limited to evidence or governance that cannot be handled securely at distance.
• Year-one completion requires traceable finding-to-decision records, controlled adviser outputs, post-decision learning and two independently capable deputies.

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 TAX-PER-2026-MAD-21.