Share-Based Payment Accounting Adviser

The mandate

The standing advisory question is whether equity-linked and cash-settled awards are translated into accounting that reflects their actual terms, modification history and vesting conditions. The Adviser will challenge selected award analyses and the governance used when plan documentation, participant communication and approved changes do not align cleanly. The appointment does not include compensation design or plan administration.

Three days a week will support a fortnightly case clinic, a monthly portfolio-change scan and one scheduled governance day on site. Management will provide executed plan documents, approval evidence, participant terms, modification records and its proposed accounting. The Adviser will not infer missing facts from summaries or informal descriptions.

Advice must separate grant-date classification, service and performance conditions, market features, modifications, cancellations, settlements and group recharge questions. For each matter, the Adviser will identify decisive facts, plausible alternatives and the event that would require reconsideration. The purpose is to strengthen accountable decisions, not to create an evergreen parallel review function.

The Chief Accounting Officer owns conclusions and entries. The Adviser has no line authority, valuation responsibility, approval vote or role in participant communications. Where legal, tax, reward and accounting perspectives differ, the Adviser will state the accounting implications without attempting to settle the other domains.

The term should leave an indexed decision library, improved intake checklist and clearer governance for plan changes before they become accounting surprises. Conflicts involving remuneration advisers, valuation providers, executives or current equity interests require explicit clearance before case access.

What you will own

• Define high-risk case criteria for new awards, modifications, settlements, cancellations and changes in expected vesting.
• Review selected analyses for classification, measurement date, condition treatment, expense pattern and modification consequence.
• Challenge whether approved documents and participant terms support the facts asserted in accounting papers.
• Facilitate fortnightly clinics that teach internal preparers to isolate decisive award terms and contrary evidence.
• Maintain a principles library linking anonymised cases to judgments, accepted dispositions and future change triggers.
• Alert accounting leadership when recurring administration gaps create a broader completeness or modification-capture risk.
• Coordinate questions for legal, reward, tax and valuation owners without taking responsibility for their conclusions.
• Preserve advisory independence and decline preparation, approval or operational administration requests.

Candidate qualifications

• Demonstrate senior interpretation of IFRS 2 or ASC 718 across equity, cash and group-settled arrangements.
• Provide a modification or settlement case where the communicated description differed from the governing terms.
• Show how you identified and corrected an inappropriate distinction between vesting and non-vesting features.
• Evidence influence across accounting, reward and legal stakeholders without formal authority over any of them.
• Describe how you governed valuation specialist input while retaining accounting judgment with management.
• Explain a conflict or independence concern you resolved before accepting an executive-remuneration matter.
• Show that your advisory work improved internal analysis rather than creating ongoing reliance on you.

Working terms and boundaries

• The eight-month retainer covers three days weekly, fortnightly clinics, monthly scans and scheduled travel.
• Management must provide executed documents and its initial accounting analysis before a case enters review.
• Compensation design, participant communication, valuation opinions, booking and plan administration are excluded.
• The Adviser has influence only; the Chief Accounting Officer retains every conclusion and approval.
• Additional case volume or urgent attendance must be reprioritised or documented through a retainer change.

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 FNA-ADV-2026-RUH-15.