Finance Director

The Director Finance is responsible for all legal matters within the Mexico business. In this role he/she and the related team act as business partners to internal stakeholders on all levels of the organization to ensure financially sound decision making, accurate reporting, high-quality planning, compliance with internal & external guidelines and law. In his/her capacity he/she drives profitability, profit and cash flow through pro-active Controlling, Tax Management, and appropriate financing.

Develop organization further
• The Director Finance builds and maintains a competent, efficient, effective and highly engaged Finance organization.
• Clearly define roles and responsibilities setting priorities through the annual target setting process (Amplify).
• Actively fosters the Big Job Model principles (especially mid term succession preparation).
• Promotes internal and external trainings (where necessary) to elevate knowledge levels within the team.
• Ensures that all key processes are adequately documented.

Business Partnership
• Builds a solid relationship with the Mexico leadership team, budget holders and the peers in project companies based on mutual respect and trust. • Acts as the key sparring partner to the Mexico General Manager
• Is driven through a service mentality by sharing insights, by supporting budget reallocations, by ensuring overall budget adherence, by acting as a facilitator to achieve objectives, by highlighting risks and opportunities, by providing financial simulations and by developing business cases for new projects.
• Manages fact and knowledge-based, spreads and exchanges information, translates f indings into action, and follows up on agreed measures.
• Promotes efficiency, productivity and profitability in all company areas by ensuring efficient use and protection of company assets and maximizing benefits and synergies with other activities.
• Increases cost consciousness by creating transparency, by rethinking local policies while checking compliance with existing ones, by challenging spending behavior, by conducting bidding processes/tenders and by creating a “competition” for lower spending.
• Works closely with the management team to improve the company's cash flow.

Accounting & Taxes
• Guarantees 100% compliance with all relevant local legislation (e.g.: statutory accounting standards, tax law, civil law) and internal group guidelines.
• Ensures that the accounting is correct, transparent (within the organization and towards HQ) and complete (including appropriate accruals/deferrals). The financial statements must present a true and fair view of the financial position, financial performance and cash flows of the reported period.
• Assures timely submission of accurate financial information to all stakeholders.
• Proactively and cost efficiently manages the year end audit process and external auditors to secure clean Early Warning Memorandums and clean Management Letters strictly avoiding an “Emphasis of Matter” or a “Qualified Opinion”
• While maintaining quality, continuously drives efficiency by streamlining processes (within Finance and beyond Finance) and the use of available tools.
• Establishes an effective tax management in cooperation with the tax specialists in HQ and external tax advisors ensuring that all changes in tax legislation and their implications are evaluated well in advance, a regular tax risk assessment is being conducted and all day to day tax queries are handled in the most cost-efficient way.

Controlling & Commercial
• Fully complies with the Group Controlling guideline.
• Designs the system setup to perfectly mirror the responsibilities in the organization.
• Ensures a timely distribution of financial information (plan & actual) to every budget holder by sending out reports, by allowing system access and by presenting the information in regular meetings.
• Promotes efficiency in Controlling in order to minimize time spent for report generation and increase time for analysis, commenting and insights sharing.
• Establishes a true bottom up planning process and develops a local planning calendar based on the group planning timetable allowing for sufficient review time and feedback cycles
• Assures that the forecasting accuracy of business plans, revised estimates and long term forecasts is high by creating an environment in which realistic plans are being developed.
• Supports budget holders during the planning process, but also challenges input by eliminating reserves and agreeing corrections on too ambitious/conservative plans. Makes sure that risks and opportunities are well balanced.
• Measures and reviews the cost/benefit ratio of proposed activities.
• Sets up a monthly reporting calendar. Plan – actual deviations are commented on their causes with the objective of preventing further deviations and agreeing on counter measures.
• Drives profitability by launching and developing folding, trade term optimization and price increases according to the local market requirements and macro-economic environment.

Cash Management & Treasury
• Complies with all relevant HQ Treasury guidelines.
• Establishes and maintains an effective credit risk management, makes sure that payment terms are in line with industry standards, assesses customer creditworthiness on a regular basis, sets credit limits and security requirements. implements in cooperation with the sales department an effective collection and dunning process and strictly avoids bad debts
• Sets up an effective cash management by minimizing working capital needs and proactively transfers surplus cash to the parent company.
• Aligns all financing (including leasing) and bank selection decisions with the Treasury department in HQ
• Ensures that reliable liquidity forecasts are being delivered to HQ on time.
• Carries out a return on investment calculation for all proposed investments as per the Investment guideline and makes sure that a positive return will be achieved
• Manages all local insurance topics (cars, claims and general internal inquiries) according to the guideline. Supports HQ in the Enterprise Risk Management calculations.

Legal & Internal Controls
• Ensures that all of the company’s activities comply with the laws
• Assures the application of and compliance with all relevant HQ guidelines
• Implements local policies and processes to set principles for behavior, to have a written documentation of the common sense and to guarantee fair treatment within the organization
• Establishes and continuously re-assesses an effective Internal Control System and thus minimizes the risk of errors, misconduct or fraud by designing company processes to satisfy the 4 eyes principle, ensuring sufficient segregation of duties and creating awareness about the possibility of fraud
• Promotes candid business conduct and establishes a climate of honesty, trust and loyalty (= lead by example) and encourage a (confidential) culture of reporting misbehavior
• Ensures proper commitment policies and approval levels as well as that contracts are in place for all key service partners across all areas of the business.

Your experience
• University degree in Accounting.
• 10-15 y relevant work experience in Finance functions
• Ideally FMCG background
• Accounting, Audit or Tax qualification is preferred
• Strong People Manager (Multilevel Teams)
• Highly Analytical and very skilled individual
• Ability to quickly identify and analyze risks & impacts and able to define alternatives.
• Flexible and a team player
• Must be self-motivated, self-directed and be able to work under pressure in a fast paced team environment.
• Capable of communicating precisely, effectively and convincingly based on facts with internal and external stakeholders.
• Good communication and presentation skills
• Controlling & Financial Management
• Accounting (HGB, IFRS)
• Taxes (incl. International and TP)
• Commercial & Business Partnership
• Treasury
• Digitalization
• General Legal
• Negotiation Skills
• Profitability Management