Multi-Ledger Close Stabilisation Director

The mandate

A multi-ledger close has become unpredictable: dependencies are discovered late, local sign-offs do not always represent complete evidence, and the group team expends senior time reconciling different versions of the same position. The Interim Director is engaged to restore command of the close within nine months and leave a tested operating rhythm behind. This is a stabilisation assignment with a defined exit, not a route to a permanent controllership seat.

The first ten working days will be spent observing one live close cycle, tracing selected balances from source approval to consolidation intake and identifying where timing failure masks a quality failure. The Director will have authority to reset cut-offs, institute daily exception control, assign named recovery owners and pause unsupported late journals. Reserved accounting decisions continue to sit with the Group Financial Controller.

By the end of month two, the work must move from firefighting to managed recovery. A single dependency map, tiered close room and objective completion criteria will replace informal progress statements. The Director must protect staff from indiscriminate escalation while making missed ownership unmistakable. Any intervention should distinguish between a genuine capacity constraint, an unclear policy and a failure to execute an agreed control.

The handover begins in month four, not at the end. Two nominated internal leaders will progressively chair close checkpoints, adjudicate routine exceptions and own the root-cause backlog while the Interim Director observes and tests. A complete close playbook, risk ledger, judgment route and two-cycle performance record must be accepted before release.

The assignment excludes platform replacement, permanent organisation design and authorship of new accounting standards. Recommendations may be made, but the interim’s accountable perimeter is close reliability, evidence discipline and capability transfer. Extension will not be used to compensate for delayed documentation or avoidable dependency on the appointee.

What you will own

• Diagnose the top twelve sources of late close movement and distinguish recurring control defects from one-off reporting events.
• Reset critical-path sequencing across ledgers, eliminations and review layers, with explicit entry and exit criteria for each stage.
• Institute daily exception governance that records owner, financial exposure, evidence gap, resolution route and forecast clearance time.
• Refuse manual journals that miss the agreed support or approval threshold, while escalating genuine reserved judgments promptly.
• Deliver two consecutive close cycles within the approved timetable without carrying unidentified reconciling items into review.
• Train two internal successors through chaired simulations, supervised live decisions and documented feedback on their intervention quality.
• Produce a handover pack containing dependency maps, control standards, unresolved risks, recurring judgments and a ninety-day sustainment plan.
• Recommend structural changes when evidence supports them, without initiating systems procurement or permanent staffing decisions.

Candidate qualifications

• Evidence at least two interim close recoveries involving multiple ledgers, reporting timetables and geographically distributed owners.
• Quantify how your intervention changed late journals, unreconciled balances, review-cycle duration and post-close corrections.
• Describe a moment when you stopped a weakly supported entry under deadline pressure and how you preserved the reporting timetable.
• Show practical mastery of consolidation dependencies, foreign-currency effects, intercompany mismatches and local-to-group review boundaries.
• Demonstrate a handover method that made internal leaders independently effective before your departure rather than after it.
• Provide an example of separating process delay from policy ambiguity and resolving each through a different governance route.
• Evidence the ability to operate on-site, direct senior finance professionals and communicate daily status without creating noise.

Working terms and boundaries

• The appointment runs for nine months at five days a week; any extension is capped at three months and requires a written residual-risk case.
• Day rates cover normal preparation, on-site leadership and routine close-period intensity; exceptional travel requires prior written approval.
• The Interim Director may control close sequencing and evidence gates but may not sign reserved statutory conclusions or make permanent appointments.
• No conversion presumption, completion bonus or success fee attaches to this assignment.
• Release depends on two stable cycles, accepted handover artifacts and successor capability, not simply expiry of the calendar term.

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 6 October 2026. Mandate reference FNA-INT-2026-SIN-02.