Interim Chief Financial Officer, India R&D Entity — Acquired Perimeter Accountability

The mandate

An India research and development company has just changed ownership and needs an executive finance owner for its new group reporting requirements and inherited operating obligations. The interim CFO will take the entity seat, establish a dependable finance perimeter and keep ordinary operations controlled. The immediate questions concern which company owes what, who can authorise expenditure and which records support the new owner's financial view. Acquisition valuation and the commercial rationale for the deal are separate responsibilities; this leader owns the live entity finance decisions after the ownership change.

The fixed six-month appointment begins on 26 October 2026 at five days weekly, onsite in Bengaluru. Eighteen finance staff form the direct team. A permanent entity CFO search runs concurrently, with recruitment and transition planned inside the temporary term. Opening priorities are payroll and supplier obligations, bank and approval authority, and the next entity close. The interim leader must maintain operating continuity while making incomplete acquisition information visible, rather than allow uncertainty about inherited responsibilities to create either uncontrolled payment or unnecessary paralysis.

Delegation covers finance staffing, routine entity expenditure and supported financial judgements through qualified controller review. Material settlements, changes to group arrangements and commitments outside the approved budget require authorised executive or board sanction. Legal owners confirm entity rights and obligations; tax owners confirm their specialist treatment. The CFO must use those conclusions consistently across accounts and approvals. A request from the acquiring group is not itself evidence that a particular company should bear the obligation, and a historic posting is not sufficient proof when ownership or contractual responsibility has changed.

The seat excludes transaction-price negotiation, legal restructuring and a wholesale replacement of accounting systems. Necessary operating controls and group-reporting interfaces remain in scope. Handover requires an accepted inherited-obligations register, resolved authority map, reconciled reporting pack and a permanent CFO running one full close with limited interim assistance. There is no extension. The managing director and group finance leader accept transfer together, with residual matters allocated to accountable owners. The exit must leave entity finance functioning independently, not defer ordinary decisions into a future integration programme whose scope and leadership are still unsettled.

What you will own

• Confirm critical opening obligations and payment authority with internal owners, protecting payroll and essential supplier continuity while identifying inherited commitments whose legal or financial responsibility needs authoritative resolution before settlement.
• Establish an acquired-obligations register connecting contracts, balances and decisions, distinguishing confirmed entity liabilities from disputed group allocations or information gaps rather than assuming the historic ledger proves current responsibility.
• Decide routine finance and approved expenditure priorities within delegation, escalating material settlements and unauthorised requests through the managing director and group route with clear evidence of consequence and available alternatives.
• Lead entity close and new group-reporting interfaces through reconciled records, preserving qualified accounting judgements and making acquisition-related uncertainty explicit instead of allowing temporary integration labels to absorb unexplained differences.
• Restore practical approval and bank-authority controls with legal and technology owners, verifying that operating users can execute the intended segregation rather than relying only on a signed responsibility chart.
• Prepare the permanent CFO transition throughout the term with decision history, reporting logic and residual matters, requiring the successor to operate a full close before executive accountability is transferred.
• Present final handover acceptance to the joint sponsors with observed finance operation and accountable remaining issues, ending the fixed appointment without leaving an unpriced dependency on the interim's personal interpretation of acquisition records.

Candidate qualifications

• Demonstrate twenty-two to twenty-eight years of finance experience with senior entity responsibility in technology, R&D, engineering or a comparable multinational operating company. Deputy-CFO or equivalent leadership is relevant when it includes owned executive decisions. Show an acquisition, entity reorganisation or comparable operating-perimeter transition in which you clarified obligations and authority. Assessment centres on financial accountability through changed responsibilities, with evidence of the records, approvals and operating decisions you personally owned.
• Bring recognised accounting or management-accounting preparation and applied knowledge of appropriate entity and group reporting frameworks. Explain how a material balance or obligation required legal, tax or technical-accounting input before finance could act. You must distinguish historic records, current responsibility and approved treatment, using qualified conclusions rather than making a convenient group allocation appear authoritative through repetition in a spreadsheet.
• Have taken charge of a finance team when essential payments and reporting could not pause. Describe the first decisions you made, the matter you escalated and the improvement you deferred until ownership was clear. The role requires operating judgement and practical delegation, with evidence that controls worked in actual bank, approval and accounting routines instead of only in the intended future organisation.
• Be available for the six-month onsite commitment from the stated start and demonstrate an executive successor handover tested through actual operation. Confidentiality around acquired records and staff matters is essential. Show how you maintained a usable decision log and residual-risk ownership without turning the interim leader into a permanent repository of knowledge. The appointment must deliver continuity and transfer inside a fixed period, with no expectation of extended service.

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 12 October 2026. Mandate reference CVU-INT-2026-IND-253.