Multi-geography CFO — Professional Services · anchored India

Position overview

Gladwin International Leadership Advisors is representing a confidential organisation in Professional Services on a senior CFO leadership mandate anchored in India. The remit explicitly spans Middle East, USA, Malaysia.

This is a multi-geography leadership role requiring orchestration across time zones, matrix stakeholders, and often dual-reporting into global and regional lines.

The mandate fits a leader comfortable owning the narrative externally while upgrading how decisions are made internally.

Context you will inherit

• Market & sector: Practice building leadership — finding partners who can build new service lines or geographic practices from scratch, requiring entrepreneurial instinct within a structured partnership environment
• Geographic spine: Primary hub India with explicit corridor responsibility across Middle East, USA, Malaysia.
• Organisation stage: Growth agenda collides with legacy cost base; productivity and automation are board-level topics, not staff functions.
• Stakeholders: Owners may include PE operating partners, a promoter family office, or public-market investors — each with different tempo and KPIs.
• Secondary lens: Retention of high performers — professional services firms face constant attrition of their best people to corporate roles; building compelling career propositions is a leadership challenge

The mandate (12–24 month arc)

1. Performance management: Implement a single view of segment economics; kill vanity metrics that confuse the executive committee.
2. Tax & treasury: Optimise structure where legal and practical; ensure treasury policy matches operating reality in each hub.
3. M&A finance: Lead model quality, synergies discipline, and integration of finance teams on deals.
4. Digital finance: Sponsor ERP / EPM roadmap and management reporting automation — fewer spreadsheets, more decisions.
5. Enterprise risk partnership: Co-own conduct and operational risk themes where financial incentives drive behaviour.
6. Team capability: Hire or develop FP&A and business finance partners who can challenge GMs with data, not slides.

Responsibilities (representative)

• Build finance business partnering that GMs trust as thought partners, not scorekeepers only.
• Sponsor digital finance roadmap — close, planning, and management reporting on modern platforms.
• Co-own working capital programme with COO and sales — DSO, DPO, inventory as appropriate.
• Lead finance integration on acquisitions with clear Day-1 / Day-100 milestones.
• Align incentive design with cash and return metrics, not only accounting profit.

Leadership profile

• Education: Strong undergraduate grounding; MBA / advanced degree / professional qualification common at this level.
• Capital discipline: Examples of improving forecast accuracy, returns, or balance-sheet resilience in Professional Services.
• Judgment: High signal-to-noise under pressure; ethical clarity; willingness to halt initiatives that break risk appetite.
• Communication: Executive presence in English; additional languages valued where market-relevant.
• Geographic muscle: Comfort operating from India with regular engagement across Middle East, USA.

Team & culture

Silos are real. Your job is to design forums and incentives so product, technology, risk, and commercial leaders solve problems together instead of optimising local KPIs.

Success measures (examples)

• Growth quality: Mix of recurring revenue, new logos, and cross-sell — not volume for its own sake.
• Productivity: Unit cost, automation savings, or throughput improvements with audited baselines.
• Customer: NPS / CSAT where tracked; contract renewals; reference-ability in strategic accounts.
• Franchise: Clean compliance record; reputation stability in industry and government forums.

First 90 days (orientation arc)

• Days 1–30: Listening tour — customers, regulators (as appropriate), top team 1:1s, and unfiltered view of numbers; pause major reorganisation.
• Days 30–60: Publish a short memo on priorities, non-goals, and decision rights; align executive committee on three enterprise bets.
• Days 60–90: Lock operating cadence; fill or upgrade one to two critical seats; deliver one visible win (customer, cost, or culture).
• Commission a pragmatic view of data, cyber, and automation posture; sponsor one bounded pilot with ROI hypothesis.
• Establish escalation discipline with matrix partners — fewer meetings, clearer decision logs.
• Clarify RACI for cross-border deals, staffing, and pricing exceptions.

Stakeholder map (illustrative)

• Internal: CEO or regional president, CFO, risk / legal, CHRO, CIO or CDO, business GMs, internal audit.
• External: Strategic accounts, channel partners, industry associations, regulators (where material).
• Owners: PE operating partners, promoter office, or public investors — pace and clarity matter as much as vision.

Travel & mobility

Travel weighted to priority markets and quarterly global or regional forums; flexibility for crisis windows.

Compensation

Market-aligned CFO remuneration in Professional Services with performance linkage; sign-on and relocation considered for exceptional fits.

Application status

This mandate is no longer accepting new applications. The search progressed through Q4 2025 and closed for submissions in February 2026. We retain this posting for transparency on the type of leadership work we carry in Professional Services and India. For similar active mandates, browse open roles or submit a general profile through executive search inquiry.

Reference: professional-services · CFO · India · Gladwin International Leadership Advisors