Senior Commercial Finance Manager

This a key role within the London Estate Finance team. The London Estate is a c. £5bn property portfolio, with residential, retail, office and hotel assets located in Mayfair and Belgravia. As a business we have an ambition to be the place, property and landlord of choice in central London.
The Senior Commercial Finance Manager will work closely with the asset management and finance teams to co-create and deliver against robust data driven district plans and strategies.  Collectively these district strategies will execute the overall London Estate strategy, delivering on our ambitious financial goals through being the place, property and landlord of choice.

The Senior Commercial Finance Manager will lead on coordinating the delivery of Joint Venture (JV) reporting, monitoring, analysis and coordination. They will be an expert in understanding the detailed workings of our Mayfair JV, ensuring the business delivers exceptional service to our partner. The Mayfair JV is the largest joint venture ever established by our UK business and provides an excellent opportunity for the business to demonstrate its market leading asset, property and development management capabilities. The Senior Commercial Finance Manager will also take responsibility for analysing and supporting the recommendation of new JV opportunities for the London Estate. They would play an important role in supporting the execution of joint venture opportunities that the business wishes to pursue.

The role holder will lead on providing high quality portfolio analysis and insight across the London Estate, allowing the business leaders to make nimble and well-informed decisions that drive performance. They will play an important role in managing risk, both in our Co-Investment and London Estate businesses, facilitating high quality tracking and ensuring controls and mitigation strategies are being implemented. 

This is a role with ongoing exposure to senior individuals in our UK business including the Executive Directors of Finance, London Estate and Co-Investment; providing great opportunity to influence and learn from them. They will be senior member of the London Estate and Co-Investment Finance Team providing strong support to the Finance Director and working with them to lead the team.

Key Responsibilities

• Take ownership of the financial aspects of the annual district strategy process, ensuring it drives enhanced performance and decision making, feeding into the GPUK strategic plan and supporting delivery of GPUK’s strategic goals. Coach and support property teams with financial analysis, and work closely with Group research to ensure best practice in assessment of future strategies and returns.
• Coordinate all relevant JV reporting including the annual business plan and quarterly asset management report. Provide expert input to internal reports and recommendations. Run the JV distribution and fee billing processes and control the JV cash positions.
• Working closely with the Head of Finance, London Estate (and their team) to optimise business partnering across the London Estate, including driving efficiencies in processes and leveraging high quality data to provide relevant and practical feedback that supports better decisions and enhanced performance.
• Work with senior stakeholders (in finance and the business) on ad-hoc projects that will come up periodically for different stakeholder groups, delivery exceptional project outputs on any London Estate related topic.
• Fully support the Fusion project (finance and property system transformation), advocating and promoting benefits realisation for both the finance and London Estate team. Constantly look for opportunities to automate processes and improve the use and quality of data for decision making.
• Support the Head of Analysis and their team by acting as a local expert in use of the UK analysis toolset (e.g. development appraisal templates, district strategy models). Support the Finance Director in assessing recommendations for approval to release or commit or capital to asset level interventions (e.g. small/medium developments, disposals etc.)
• Work closely with the London Estate investment team to produce our annual sales plan ensuring this delivers the optimal capital allocation across the Estate to achieve the GPUK and London strategy.
• Prepare cashflow forecasts for London estate and co-investment to enable the business to plan its future activity and monitor risk.
• Support the London Estate Strategy and Performance Lead, Head of Finance, London Estate and Finance Director in routine reporting to the London Estate Senior Team and in relevant reporting to the Executive Committee, Board and Trustees.
• Own the London Estate and Co-investment risk registers and support the Head of Analysis in managing the UK risk framework.

To achieve this, it will be necessary to:

• Develop exceptional relationships with the Mayfair and Belgravia asset management teams as well as the Public Spaces, Investment and Residential teams.
• Be a critical friend, challenger, advisor and supporter to these teams, providing very strong financial, analytical and commercial skills.
• Gain trust and respect from the property teams and be a go to person who provides exceptional advice, analysis and insight.
• Build strong and transparent relationships with the Finance Business Partners, Finance Centre, Treasury, Tax and Legal Teams.
• Develop a strong external network and understanding of the best practices and technologies to support best in class portfolio analysis, understanding and management.
• Work closely with the Finance Business Partners and Finance Centre to source and help analyse data ensuring that data used by the finance and London Estate teams is consistent and accurate.
• Work effectively with Group Technology and external data providers to help support the improvement of analytical tools to improve the range of data and its analysis and presentation (including the use of AI and automation).

Key Requirements

• High degree of understanding of what drives the performance of properties and places. 
• Excellent numerical and analytical skills, with the ability to draw out and convey simple messages from large data sets. Likely to have a finance qualification (e.g. Accountant, CFA etc).
• Financial and commercial awareness to be able to effectively evaluate the risks and opportunities to deliver exceptional risk adjusted returns. Have excellent working knowledge of key financial concepts (discounted cashflows, hurdle rates etc).
• Prior experience working in a large investment property portfolio (e.g. portfolio/fund management, research, strategy/analysis, FP&A etc.). 
• Ability to easily navigate between the detail and the bigger picture. 
• Experience with range of IT reporting tools and willing to trial new ideas and solutions. Power BI experience desirable.
• Skilful manager of stakeholder relationship, willing to apply challenge where appropriate. Experience of influencing and supporting senior stakeholders.
• Experience of supporting junior members of staff highly desirable. Willing to support wider team during times of peak workloads. 
• Sustainability - Implements more sustainable ways of working and encourages others to improve sustainability performance. 
• Able to give and receive feedback to deliver high personal and team performance. 
• Report writing to a high standard including clearly argued and explained recommendations. 

We know flexibility is important and take a hybrid approach to working, please contact us for further details.

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