Salary: £90k+
Location: London
ROLE PURPOSE:
Howden Group has completed over 100 M&A transactions over the last 2 and half years for a total spend of approaching £5bn. As a result, monitoring the performance and returns from the acquired business has become a key priority.
The jobholder will prepare quarterly financial and business analysis against investment case for this completed M&A to provide insight into status of post-deal integration and progress towards key strategic objectives alongside financial performance.
The jobholder is responsible for ensuring that their activities comply with Group policy in order to achieve targets, meet monthly, quarterly and annual reporting deadlines and assist with the development of the business and deliver an excellent and comprehensive service.
The jobholder is expected to be a Qualified Accountant with experience of analysing business performance, ideally within an acquisitive group. They will work in conjunction with other more senior members of staff, providing assistance as required.
KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES:
Planning/Reporting:
- Preparation of quarterly M&A reporting pack including analysis of large transformational deals, summary of smaller deals and cohort-based performance analysis
- Providing detailed analysis and insight into drivers of performance and ensuring measurement is on a like-for-like basis and to drive continuous improvement over reporting of synergy delivery
- To develop returns analysis vs investment case in collaboration with the Financial Controller
- Review of investment papers and due diligence findings to highlight potential challenges with accounting and reporting
- Continuous development of reporting solutions
- Ad-hoc reporting and financial analysis
- Manages assigned projects and contribute to other projects as required
- Provide ad hoc relevant management information to senior management where requested, maintaining quality service for business-as-usual activities
- Analytical review of P&L trends
- Understanding of key basis differences between investment papers and actual figures to derive like-for-like scenarios
- Writing clear, concise commentary to summarise complex accounting issues for board-level consumption
- Works closely with Financial Controller, providing technical support where appropriate
- Development work on reporting systems to improve and streamline processes
- Keeps informed of all regulatory and legal changes which impacts on the job role
- Responds appropriately to urgent issues as they arise
- Ensures that reporting processes and key assumptions are clearly documented
- Interprets instructions and issues arising, and then implement actions according to policies and procedures
- Develops strong relationships with key stakeholders to ensure efficient collaboration
- Responds to stakeholders(both internal and external) requirements as appropriate
- Behaves with all stakeholders (both internal and external) fairly and ethically
- Shares information that could be beneficial to the Group with the Financial Controller and Key Management where appropriate
- The jobholder has no direct reports. However, they may be required to supervise or mentor other staff from time to time.
- This role will involve working closely with a wide range of internal stakeholders, building a rapport with these colleagues will be critical to success
- Actively undertakes personal development to ensure up to date knowledge and understanding of best practice
- Remains aware of external, industry, legal and regulatory developments etc to ensure practice and outputs are of a sufficiently high standard
- Keeps informed of all legal and regulatory developments relevant to the Group
The Board of each Operating Entity requires the highest standards of corporate governance, operational excellence and financial reporting throughout the Group from all its employees. Specific responsibilities are listed below. Reference to team (below) is only applicable where the job holder has direct line management responsibilities:
- Ensures compliance of self and team (as appropriate if the job holder has line management responsibilities) with all applicable legal, fiscal and regulatory obligations in the form of policies and procedures
- Ensures correct authorisation is obtained and processes followed when required by the Operating Entity and/or Group
- Ensures performance, HR and T&C records are up to date and meet the Operating Entity and/or Group's requirements (which will include those of direct reports if the job holder has line management responsibilities)
- Maintains accurate records and deal with correspondence appropriately
- Operates in an honest, professional and ethical manner
- Strictly adheres to the Group Employee Code of Conduct which strongly aligns to the FCA's code of conduct that all regulated entities must adhere to
- Completes all relevant regulatory training
- Ensures remain competent to carry out role (this will include team members where job holder has direct reports)
- Strong Excel user, with experience of Pivot Tables, nested logic functions and ERP system plug-ins
- Competent PowerPoint user
- Experience of report writing
- Flexible and able to quickly adapt to change
- Motivated and resilient
- Accuracy and attention to detail
- Good organizational skills and communication skills (written and verbal)
- Able to work to and manage deadlines
- Report Writing Skills
- Holds accounting qualification with recognised accounting body (e.g. ICAEW, ACCA, etc.) with some post-qualification experience