Group Chief Financial Officer — Accounting Network Financial Integrity

The mandate

An accounting and advisory group is creating a CFO seat as controlled businesses and independent network relationships become harder to explain through one financial picture. Shared branding, referral arrangements and client-service coordination do not necessarily mean that every affiliated firm belongs in the consolidation perimeter. The CFO will own the group's financial integrity and entity control. Employment is open-ended, with an eighteen-month opening agenda across four controlled entities before the finance institution moves into continuing oversight of the network's approved development.

The group needs a defensible boundary between its own financial obligations and those of independent affiliates. Referral fees, shared service charges and cross-border client arrangements must retain the authorised underlying agreement and the correct entity record. Consolidation adjustments should eliminate genuine intragroup items without removing amounts due to an independent firm merely because it participates in the same network. Legal and technical accounting owners provide control and arrangement conclusions. The CFO preserves their evidence, reconciles the resulting group position and challenges inconsistent inputs instead of letting a familiar brand determine the financial perimeter informally.

Twenty-one group and entity finance colleagues support approximately 420 fee-earning professionals. You approve ordinary group-finance treatments within policy, set consolidation controls and govern financial readiness for authorised entity distributions. Entity boards retain distribution approval; qualified local owners determine legal, tax and reporting requirements. The audit committee reserves material policy and perimeter decisions, while the group chief executive approves strategic commitments. The remit excludes partner admission or succession design, independent statutory audit opinions and professional advice to the group's clients. Finance leadership must strengthen the network's own records without confusing them with the services its professionals sell.

The opening agenda should establish controlled-entity reporting packs, an explainable consolidation bridge and distribution evidence that shows the approved basis, entity conditions and available cash. Mumbai is the hybrid base with planned UK and Singapore entity reviews. Continuing responsibility includes developing entity finance leaders and maintaining the distinction when an affiliation or agreement changes. A reliable group result should be traceable to authorised entity positions and genuine eliminations; a distribution should remain a documented governance decision, not a routine payment inferred from group profit or a historic network practice whose legal and financial conditions have not been checked.

What you will own

• Establish the controlled-entity financial perimeter through retained legal and technical accounting conclusions, distinguishing independent affiliations from group entities before shared network activity enters consolidation or executive reporting.
• Decide ordinary consolidation adjustments within approved policy through reciprocal entity evidence, preventing independent-network balances from being eliminated merely because counterpart firms share branding or client-service relationships.
• Govern authorised network charges and settlements through their underlying agreements, identifying the entity responsible for the amount and the professional conclusion needed when treatment or obligation remains uncertain.
• Set distribution-readiness evidence for entity boards, separating reported group profit, local approved conditions and available cash before finance executes an authorised payment within its delegated limits.
• Build controlled-entity reporting packs and a maintained consolidation bridge that explain material differences, preserving source versions and unresolved policy decisions instead of relying on top-side adjustments with no entity owner.
• Develop entity finance leaders in group-boundary and distribution judgement, enabling independent challenge of unsupported charges and clearer escalation to legal, tax, technical accounting and audit-committee owners.
• Present financial integrity and reserved perimeter decisions to group governance through traceable entity positions, showing genuine unresolved obligations without implying that the group's own CFO controls affiliated firms' independent professional work.

Candidate qualifications

• Explain consolidation or multi-entity financial-control responsibility in professional services, accounting advisory, BPM or a comparable networked business. Describe an arrangement where shared commercial activity did not establish the same financial ownership as a controlled entity. Show the legal or accounting evidence, the adjustment or reporting judgement you personally changed and the authorised perimeter decision that followed, rather than assuming a network relationship automatically creates group control.
• Demonstrate financial readiness review for a distribution, settlement or similarly governed entity payment. Identify the approved basis, local professional inputs and cash condition, including a payment you delayed or escalated because its support was incomplete. The candidate must distinguish finance execution from board authorisation and must not treat consolidated profit or a historic practice as sufficient evidence of an entity's ability or authority to make the payment.
• Bring 22–28 years of finance experience with substantial virtual CFO, corporate FP&A, controllership or equivalent senior responsibility. Applied accounting or recognised professional finance competence must support rigorous reporting and technical specialist coordination. The group CFO step requires personally owned leadership across entity finance teams and a maintained control framework, while preserving audit-committee judgement and the independence of professional client-service functions outside this corporate seat.
• Show development of finance managers who could maintain reporting packs and explain consolidation differences after your intervention reduced. Secure client-adjacent and entity information, constructive cross-country stakeholder work and scheduled travel are required. Your evidence should establish an enduring finance institution with controlled source versions, candid unresolved matters and explicit reserved powers, not merely a portfolio of advisory recommendations that other people translated into the group's financial records.

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 14 October 2026. Mandate reference CVU-PER-2026-IND-175.