Finance Director - Beauty/Retail
Rapidly growing beauty/retail business are looking for a Finance Director to play the leading role in developing, implementing, and embedding and integrated finance strategy, with an initial focus on building the foundations needed for finance to operate successfully and be ready for future growth.
The main responsibilities of the FD include:
Strategy & Leadership:
- Proactive development of the finance strategy; create and maintain best practice reporting, procedures, and policies to build and improve revenue ensuring the Group is in a healthy financial position for both financial security and to safeguard the growth ambitions
- Develop actionable finance plans that align with the short-term and long-term goals of the Group, working collaboratively across the Group to create confidence and drive operational performance
- Support the CEO and COO to develop commercial focused plans to achieve business objectives in both the UK and US (specifically LA), realise group potential, make sound investment decisions, and prioritise business projects
- Set progressive financial targets with the CEO to drive turnover and profitability to attract investment to support growth plans
- Support each functional director to understand and determine the most suitable financially driven KPI's and tracking tools to support the delivery of the strategic business plan and EBITDA targets, monitor success of programmes, effectiveness of spend, and ROI.
Accounting & Financial Management:
- Ensure all financial and legal obligations are met
- Develop the budget and three-year forecast, monitoring spend and variance to budget, and forecast to optimise profit and cash position
- Prepare accurate month end financials on a timely basis, providing commentary on year-to-date performance
- Establish robust internal processes and controls, and hold the business to account to ensure they are adopted at all times
- Oversee all matters concerning payroll, tax, Companies House filings, audit and risk including, but not limited to employment taxes, VAT, corporation tax, and ensure all statutory deadlines are met. Continuously encourage full compliance
- Champion best in class finance practices, inspiring others to seek opportunities to improve and enhance the function
- Build and implement a robust financial reporting calendar, including necessary communications across the business to ensure deadlines are met.
Business Partnering:
- Build and maintain excellent working relationships with key functional and clinical stakeholders to support their financial understanding and position against budget and forecast
- Provide detailed reporting and analytical support to all relevant areas of the business to understand, plan, and drive operational performance. Challenge efficiency where required
- Support the development of financial capability and understanding of technical terminology across the business
- Support business to review client/ supplier contracts where needed.
Our clients ideal FD will have:
- Graduate level qualification, or equivalent, and either ACCA, CIMA, or ACA qualified.
- A solid understanding of the Finance function, including management and statutory reporting. Knowledge of UK accounting regulations.
- Proven ability to challenge others at the same time as maintaining a trusted relationship, particularly with functional heads, banks, HMRC, advisors and strategic partners
- Advanced Excel skills to build financial models and support analysis
- An exceptional reputation for their role as a leader preferably in a premium professional, beauty, retail or hospitality field with experience of successfully working at board level or in a role of equivalent scale
- A proactive and commercial mindset with strong business partnering experience
- A string of professional successes in delivering targets, encouraging high performance, and driving financial standards
Handle actively welcomes applicants from under-represented backgrounds - we pride ourselves on attracting the best talent for every opportunity through a commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion.
