Portfolio Group Chief Financial Officer — Public Markets Transition

The mandate

A diversified operating portfolio is considering a public-market transaction while continuing to fund its existing businesses. Directors need a group chief who can own both realities: a credible historical financial record for external scrutiny and a finance organisation capable of dependable performance after any transaction. The appointment is not simply a prospectus preparation role. It includes full group accounts, planning, treasury and subsidiary finance leadership whether the proposed capital-market route proceeds, changes or is deferred.

The finance chief is employed on an open-ended basis; an initial two-year programme covers the verified reporting perimeter, finance disclosure controls and a sustainable post-transaction operating cadence. Seventy-one professionals work through subsidiary CFOs and group managers. Delhi NCR is the base, with planned interaction with UK capital-market advisers. The group has not promised a listing date; the CFO must present readiness evidence and decision conditions rather than convert an external market aspiration into an artificial guarantee.

The chief sets group finance standards, owns preparation of financial information and approves finance judgements within board delegation. Transaction route, shareholder terms and release of material external information require authorised board approval with qualified legal and market advice. Auditors provide independent assurance, not management ownership of the source record. The CFO must resolve unsupported adjustments and inconsistent measures before they become part of a polished investment narrative whose apparent coherence exceeds the underlying evidence.

Success includes recurring reporting controls, transparent related-party records and financial forecasts that reconcile to funded operating plans. The continuing remit excludes securities underwriting, legal disclosure opinions and executive management of the subsidiaries' products. The board expects a finance organisation that can meet heightened scrutiny without exhausting internal capacity on a single transaction. If market conditions delay the route, controls and funding discipline should still improve the business rather than leave behind a collection of temporary adviser workarounds.

What you will own

• Establish the group reporting perimeter and historical financial evidence book, reconciling acquisitions, disposals and ownership changes so external information reflects a consistent basis rather than a series of convenient transaction-specific presentations.
• Resolve material accounting and performance-measure judgements through documented technical review, preserving the path from source records to approved financial statements and identifying adjustments whose claimed comparability is not supported by evidence.
• Govern finance disclosure preparation with legal and market advisers, defining source owners, review steps and executive approval routes while ensuring that management retains responsibility for information rather than delegating it to consultants.
• Lead the capital and liquidity plan alongside readiness work, separating operating funding needs from transaction proceeds that remain uncertain and preserving a viable business plan if the public-market route is delayed.
• Build a sustainable subsidiary reporting cadence that can support intensified scrutiny, testing close, related-party and material-judgement controls under ordinary staffing rather than relying on permanent transaction-period overtime.
• Present route readiness and financial limitations to directors through evidence, alternatives and unresolved conditions, making clear which issues can be remedied internally and which require external authority or market decisions.
• Develop the post-transaction finance organisation with capable subsidiary CFOs and clear group delegation, ensuring enduring reporting and capital responsibilities remain defined even if transaction advisers depart or the contemplated route changes.

Candidate qualifications

• Bring a 22–28-year finance career with substantial group CFO or multi-business finance-chief responsibility and personal participation in an IPO, listing or comparable external capital scrutiny programme. Show the financial decisions you owned, not merely coordination of advisers. The appointment requires continuing executive breadth across accounts, cash, funding and finance people, as well as the ability to lead a time-sensitive readiness agenda.
• Hold a recognised accounting or management-accounting qualification with substantive knowledge of group reporting under relevant Indian and international frameworks. Explain how you resolved a historical perimeter, related-party or accounting adjustment issue that materially affected external understanding. Qualified legal and market advisers retain disclosure interpretation; you must maintain a technically defensible financial record and recognise the limits of finance authority.
• Demonstrate significant debt and equity raising, credible modelling and investor communication. Evidence should include a recommendation to change timing, route or terms because financial readiness or downside funding did not support the preferred transaction plan. Fundraising achievements must be accompanied by judgement about conditions and continuing obligations, rather than presented as proof that every future capital route will succeed.
• Have led subsidiary CFOs and group teams through heightened scrutiny without replacing recurring controls with temporary emergency processing. Describe how you protected operating capacity, made unresolved evidence visible and retained accountability after advisers left. The role demands confidentiality, candid board communication and the willingness to keep ordinary funding disciplined when attention is concentrated on a possible transaction.

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 11 October 2026. Mandate reference CVU-PER-2026-IND-228.