Director of Commercial Finance | Retail

Are you a Commercial Finance Leader looking for an opportunity within a market leading Retailer?

This Retail Group have an acquisition-led growth strategy; and are now looking for a Director of Commercial Finance to partner with their Senior Leadership team across all brands; lead their commercial finance function; and take a lead role in potential future acquisitions.

Leading a commercial finance team of eight, you'll be accountable for...

New Business

• Commercial due diligence and internal benchmarking of new business opportunities
• Onboarding of any new acquisitions
• Drive efficiency recommendations
• Delegate ad hoc commercial judgement analysis throughout the team

Business Partnering

• Engage stakeholders to enable regular reviews and change recommendations
• Business Partner all areas with commercial negotiations and contract approval

Leadership

• Lead and support the development and growth of your team
• Role model leadership qualities and have the drive and motivation to inspire team to deliver
• Work closely with internal and external teams to achieve functional success
• Promote and maintain effective communication at all levels across the function ensure all colleagues are focused on brand and group-wide objectives

Investment

• Ownership of investment approval process and payback reporting for all business areas

Management Information and Reporting

• Report and provide commentary on consolidation of UK group figures including balance sheet and cashflow.
• Support Head of Financial reporting on commercial judgement areas
• Monitoring and consideration of various different stakeholder KPIs
• Ownership of monthly board packs
• Providing internal and external context on trends and KPIs vs targets
• Ensuring core governance metrics are reported accurately
• Developing and maintaining a risk and opportunity schedule

Budgeting and Forecasting

• Ownership of the budget, forecast and 3YP cycle
• Manage internal communications on assumptions, deadlines and reporting requirements
• Ownership of balance sheet and cashflow forecasting
• Stakeholder presentations

Sales, Margin and Stock Planning

• Build relationships with the brand product teams to support decision making
• Agree sales and buy assumptions with the Merch Directors to present to board
• Influence and develop reporting on stock efficiency

About you...

• Experienced Commercial Finance leader with Multi-Site Retail background
• You'll be very comfortable with full P&L ownership - and will have the strategic nouse and modelling capability to lead on commercial due diligence.
• You'll be a people-focused leader, with experience supporting ande developing a sizeable team.
• Highly advanced modelling skills including building and working with an integrated and detailed P&L, Balance Sheet, and Cashflow model.
• Experience of Business case preparation and sign off, contract review and negotiation
• Extensive experience of Stock Planning including markdown spend, stock targets, sales plans and stock buys

NB: This is a full time role, requiring you to be in the office (London) three days a week.