An exciting opportunity has arisen in a private equity sponsored buy and build scale up business services Group as a Head of Finance, providing comprehensive accounting and management reporting services.

The role will be pivotal in the creation and embedding of the finance function, focusing mainly on Group reporting responsibilities for the private equity investors and debt providers, as well as the financial system integration of the acquisitions.

You will support the CFO in financing and post-acquisition M&A activity i.e. debt service reporting, completion accounts and earn-out management. You will be a key point of contact for finance activities arising from the acquired entities.

Acquisition targets are typically around £0.5m EBITDA and the ambition is to reach a group EBITDA of £16m by the end of 2025. Four acquisitions have been completed, with seven more in due diligence or offer letter stage . The pipeline of future acquisitions is well defined and you may expect acquisitions to be at the pace of one at least every two months.

The target financial environment is based on individual Xero instances for each business with excel for consolidation and reporting. This role would help define and implement a 3rd party consolidation package to better manage that process. Experience of working in a multi subsidiary / company environment is essential.

The acquired businesses have basic financial systems with, typically, the support of an outsourced accounting partner. This role is to co-ordinate the booking keeping activities in the portfolio as well as the group reporting. Support is provided by the external accounting partner. This arrangement is to likely to continue for the next 12months or so however these activities will be brought in-house before the end of 2025 requiring the building of a fully functional Group finance team for this role to lead.

This role will work together with and alongside the prior Head of Finance who is to lead FP&A activities going forward.

The responsibilities

- Management of portfolio and external accounting resources for timely close out of month end.

- Payroll, VAT and corporation tax compliance

- Active recruitment and training of the finance function during a period of M&A growth.

- Responsibility for all cash flow management

- Responsibility for the timely preparation of period-end reporting to management.

- Preparation of consolidated primary financial statements for the purposes of UK statutory reporting. Responsible for the completion of the annual external audit process.

- Accounting for acquisitions and subsequent integration of team, systems and processes

- Develop and maintain the breadth of compliance reporting eg Payment Practices, Modern Slavery Statements, Gender Pay Gap, ESOS

- Must be ACA qualified with 5+ years PQE experience, including Audit in Top 20 firm.

- Must be capable of working independently and under pressure in a fast growing business.

- Expected to keep up to date in regulatory and reporting via CPD and report to CFO of potential areas of risk