Finance Director

The organisation

This company is a TICC (“Testing, Inspection, Certification and Compliance”) service provider in the maritime industry, focused on electrical-mechanical shipboard equipment to ensure safety and compliance of seagoing vessels (merchant, cruise & ferry and offshore).

From its headquarter in Rotterdam, and local offices in Panama, Shanghai, Singapore and India, the company serves ships in over 130 ports worldwide, through a combination of a carefully selected network of third-party, certified technicians and strategically located employees.

The company is specialised in, amongst others, marine elevators, ballast water treatment systems, gas detection and fire & safety appliances and can support its clients with the complex logistics of certification and maintenance of seagoing vessels.

The company is a successful and fast-growing company (>20% year on year revenue growth), with a strong international, young, and lively culture. You will work in the Rotterdam office, in a transparent, informal, and collegial working environment with 75 colleagues (before end of the year 95 colleagues) from all over the world (20+ nationalities).

In 2020, a hands-on private-equity investor joined as a shareholder to support the company in accomplishing its goal to become the go-to company for the testing and maintenance of electrical-mechanical shipboard equipment. This has involved amongst others institutionalising sales, marketing and account management, further developing the (senior) team and entering new (regulatory driven) verticals through buy-and-build. In 2022, the company acquired and integrated 2 companies (add-on), and is continuously looking for new targets. The aim is to complete 2 to 3 add-on transactions yearly.

The position

The company is looking for a Finance Director (FD), who will establish and develop the financial function in such a way that it contributes to realising the strategic objectives, continuously improving financial and operational processes and pro-actively providing analyses and reports to support (swift) strategic decision-making.

Tasks & responsibilities

The Finance Director reports directly to the CEO and is part of the senior management team, further consisting of a COO. The senior management team is supported through (monthly) meetings with the advisory board, consisting of the company founder and private equity investment team.

Within the senior management team, the Finance Director is responsible for the functional areas of financial control, business control, tax, insurance and legal matters. The FD has a critical and constructive role and is an important sparring partner for the CEO and COO. Providing proactive and unsolicited advice is highly appreciated in this organization.

As the finance team is currently sub-scale, the FD has the unique opportunity to develop and grow the financial function of the company. The management team and shareholders are committed to invest to strengthen the team, but continued hands-on involvement is a must to succeed in this role.

• You have the opportunity to establish a fit-for-purpose financial function, and building up / restructuring the team to support you in doing so. Amongst others this includes assessment of current financial IT systems, evaluation and implementation of financial (month- and year-end close) policies and procedures
• You will be responsible for providing accurate and timely (monthly, quarterly and annually) reports on how the business is performing. This includes P&L, balance sheet, cash flow and key KPIs, as well as taking care of the preparation of the annual report and point of contact for the external auditor;
• You are responsible for cash flow management, optimise working capital management, including active debtor- and creditor management, preparing cash flow forecasts and reporting on it;
• You manage the financial aspects of all the company’s subsidiaries and legal entities (including the subsidiaries in India, Panama, Singapore, and Hong-Kong).
• As part of the senior management team, you are acting as a sparring partner to the CEO and COO, you are responsible for substantiating business opportunities through financial and commercial (by using external & internal data) analysis. You discuss and draft new KPIs for the entire organization, both to assess the financial-economic performance as well as commercial traction and operational excellence;
• You play a key role in organising and optimising the financing structure of the company for the purpose of the expansion strategy. You are the point of contact for external financiers, and you are responsible for monitoring covenants and preparing periodic reports;
• You play an active role in the buy-and-build strategy of the company, supporting in the deal execution phase (together with the private equity investment team) as well as contributing to the (financial) integration of the acquisitions (together with the COO).

Candidate profile

• Completed Master’s degree in Accounting, post-graduate degree such as RA or RC is a plus
• Minimum of 10+ years of work experience in a comparable (end-responsible) position;
• Experience with fast-growing organization(s) in a SME environment
• Highly data-driven. Having tenacity, persuasiveness and flexibility to contribute to fact-based discussions with team
• Excellent communication skills;
• Decisive and proactive;
• Fluent in English;
• Experience within a private-equity owned organisation is a plus;
• The candidate is eager to grab the opportunity to work in a fast-paced international environment, being responsible for the financial function, and contributing to the strategic decision-making of the company to accelerating growth;
• Strong accounting and financial controlling, budgeting, planning and analysis skills
• Hands-on, with a natural sense of urgency in carrying out improvement projects without sacrificing quality;
• Analytically strong, someone who keeps an overview, sets priorities and capable of managing various projects side by side;
• Strong business sense. Signalling opportunities, someone who likes to constantly evaluate and challenge the business, identify risks and monitors and acts on developments;
• A strong people manager who quickly builds a relationship with colleagues and other stakeholders;
• We are looking for a candidate that HAS IT: Humility, Ambition, Smart, Intensity, Team player.

This company aim is keeping vessels safe and compliant, everywhere in the world:

• They care about people
• They care about their team
• They care about their customers
• They care about the environment
• They care about performance

The offer

Remuneration package: competitive base salary + bonus + long term incentive plan (after 1 year).

Location: Headquarter is based Rotterdam (city center), but very 'hybrid' working environment (2 or 3 days a week from home, 2 or 3 days from office)

Interested?

You can apply to this position by using the link below. For more information please contact Tom van Geel, T: (06) 2904 5147.