Finance Director

The Role

The Finance Director provides full financial management of their business unit, which has circa £170-200m EBITDA as well as a strong growth trajectory. The key stakeholders are the Exco member and the Business Unit Leadership Team.

The role provides commercial direction and governance on all material decisions impacting the financial performance of the business unit (BU) including profitability and cashflow. Ultimately you will ensure sound financial decision-making and hold the MD and leadership team to account for delivery of the financial objectives.

Another key element of the role is to lead short and long-term financial forecasting including identifying and managing risks and opportunities. This includes supporting the delivery of long-term strategy and leading on financial investment appraisals on new schemes and commercial deals.

The Team

The Finance Director role reports directly to the Chief Financial Officer and sits within the Finance Leadership Team. They are also a valued member of the BU leadership team providing independent guidance and professional expertise to the MD and senior leadership team.

The role leads a small finance team including Heads of Finance, Senior Finance Managers and Finance Managers and has matrix leadership for teams in Group Finance and the BU.

Role Expectations

Trusted Advisor to the Business Unit

You'll be a trusted partner of the Business Unit - providing support in all financial matters and robust independent challenge.

You'll leverage your commercial experience and knowledge to identify areas of strategic interest and influence business decisions, whilst providing ongoing challenge and guidance to manage the BU commercial direction. You'll work closing with the BU Leadership Team to:

• Provide regular performance reporting to support leaders in achieving their financial targets
• Support leadership team members in developing the financial implications of strategy and project activity
• Ensure leadership teams are focused on value-driving activity which supports delivery of financial targets
• Challenge the leadership where appropriate

You'll play a critical governance role - being an approver of all material commitments in the business to ensure that decision making is in line with the financial objectives and strategic direction of the BU. This involves:

• Working with Commercial and Operations teams on material contractual commitments (eg new deal assessments, product launches etc)
• Cost management including purchase order approvals and recruitment authorisations
• Payment approvals including opex spend and lease arrangements
• Being a member of the Commercial and Trading Boards for the BU where all material decisions are approved
• Making recommendations to Board and Exco where appropriate in line with delegated authority limits

You'll be the Commercial Finance lead on large-scale projects (including M&A) and change programmes to ensure that projects are aligned to our strategy, delivered on time and to cost and ultimately deliver the benefits set out in the business case. This includes:

• Supporting the wider leadership team from the development stages of projects including initial investment appraisal
• Leading the financial aspects of change programmes including cost and capex spend and ensuring return on investment
• Acting as the Finance lead on project steering committees where required

You'll ensuring our ability to exploit new opportunities and having good visibility of financial performance, anticipating potential risks. The risks may be internal or external and you'll define proposals to address and mitigate. This includes:

• Working in conjunction with the various BU teams to identify & monitor emerging risks & opportunities versus plan
• Present risk and opportunities to Commercial Board on a weekly basis and facilitate risk mitigation and opportunity development
• Ensure proposals are fully funded with supporting business cases where appropriate
• Continually refresh re-forecasts to ensure they reflect the latest, balanced position

Working with Group Finance

You'll work closely with the Group Finance Team, presenting month-end results and matrix management with the Core Finance team to prepare month-end results. You'll support FP&A with budget and re-forecast requirements, leading the activity within the BU. Ensure financial control and reporting policies are correctly applied within the BU and support Group Finance with ad-hoc queries where required and support on audit related matters within the BU as appropriate.

People Leadership

You'll provide direction, vision and leadership for the team of finance specialists. Being visible and leading by example to ensure the team have a positive experience, resulting in high engagement reflected in positive eNPS and Peakon feedback. Identifying barriers and working with the team to find the solutions.

• Ensuring robust coaching and performance management processes are in place to drive forward capability
• Ensuring all team members understand the commercial impact of their work and the value they add

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