Head of Accounting for EMEA (Based in Singapore)
Our client is a leading US MNC and is establishing their global headquarters in Singapore.
We are seeking a highly experienced Head of Accounting to oversee our European operations. This leadership role will be responsible for managing the accounting, finance, and financial reporting functions for our entities across Europe. Key responsibilities include overseeing the annual audit process, working closely with the Corporate Accounting teams in Tokyo to ensure accurate consolidated regional reporting, and managing the delivery of BPO services (AP, AR, & GL) from Poland and India to support business operations. The position also requires effective collaboration with finance and accounting teams across all regions.
Main Responsibilities
This role is responsible for the preparation and the presentation of:
- Europe consolidated financial reporting in IFRS for reporting to Corporate Japan;
- Timely management reporting to senior management team;
- IFRS for statutory accounts of the entities in Europe, plus HGB (German GAAP) for Germany) local statutory compliance, including corporate tax, transfer pricing, international payments, inter-company loans, and dividend payments to Corporate Japan;
- Oversees the preparation of local statutory accounts of the branches in their respective IFRS for local statutory compliance;
- Reporting to bankers.
He/she needs to ensure proper governance, maintenance of sound internal controls and quality over the accounting close process, acts as Europe accounting technical resource and be able to present a Consolidated Balance Sheet review of the Europe operations.
He/she would also lead any project on accounting standards/policies changes, M&A activities and IT projects, eg implementation of ERPs and OneStream consolidation software. Experience in implementing IT projects would be a bonus.
This role plans and manages the accounting and finance processes to ensure the integrity of the performance and statutory reporting plus business partnering with senior executives of group management, Tax, Treasury and Controlling department.
This role is responsible to develop and improve operational finance processes in SAP environment and represent Europe to work with global accounting teams to develop and deploy global systems for global standardized reporting and provides data analysis and dashboard reporting.
Job Scope
- Manage the accounting teams for 3 legal entities, monthly/closing and Europe consolidation, and reporting to Corporate Japan for global consolidation purpose within stipulated timeline.
- Manage the deliveries from BPO teams to support the Europe business, including executing business process transformation. The BPO teams are located in Poland and India. He/She will collaborate with the Global Process AR, AP and R2R Owners to manage the BPO teams.
- Solid knowledge of IFRS and financial reporting, act as technical resource for the accounting teams supporting Europe and be able to liaise with external auditors and manage the annual audit process.
- Responsible for overseeing staff reporting to him/her to streamline and execute robust, efficient, and accurate processes that reflect the highly matrixed and complex multinational structures.
- Provide stakeholders analysis and reports.
- Ensure that IFRS standards and internal policies are appropriately applied.
- Ability to draft and implement accounting policy or accounting memorandum.
- Support the treasury activities during the integration and day to day operations, manage any new bank relationship (communication to be issued, credit cards, signatories).
- Ensure and establish effective accounting controls, processes, and tools to support efficient accounting activities
- Strengthen and administer effective infrastructure to diagnose issues and manage progress against objectives.
- Provide concise and actionable feedback to all levels of management regarding performance on initiatives.
- Participates cross-functional meetings for business issue resolution.
- Improve and oversee accounting processes, financial systems design and implementation, and business process efficiency tools.
- Analyze and explain results and variances; identify and communicate main drivers of fluctuations between comparative periods. Find source of issues and recommend corrective actions.
- Work knowledge on SAP ERP, including its implementation or migration, and working experience on consolidation software such as HFM and OneStream, is a big plus.
- Harmonization of business processes in place across Europe entities.
- Work closely with the Financial Planning & Analysis team regarding budgeting/forecasting to ensure efficient execution and submissions to the head office in Japan.
- Support potential M&A activities from accounting standpoint
- Collaborate to internal and external audit processes.
- Serve as lead and mentor to its direct reports and colleagues
Experience
- Min 7 years of Europe financial accounting and controlling experience, including direct report supervision, preferably in an international corporate setting interfacing with multiple divisions and overseas entities.
- 3-6 years work experience in Big 4.
- Based in Singapore and must be a CA/CPA/ACCA
- Agile, fast paced and problem solving
- SAP experience is a must
