Job: Finance Manager – Luxury Goods

Our Client

Our client is a luxury perfumes company with a well-established presence in the North American market, selling through prestigious retailers including Saks, Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdale’s and Bergdorf Goodman and its own transactional website. The Americas region is the brand’s largest market, representing one-third of global retail sales and more than 40% of net shipments worldwide.

Reporting to the FD based in Europe, this is a 360 degree role, ranging from the day to day administrative activities right the way up to providing decision-making support to the Americas Management team. We are looking for a proactive, detail-oriented individual with strong accounting skills, commercial acumen and a true partner to the business, who is not afraid to “get their hands dirty”.

Key Responsibilities

• Manage local cash requirements and resources, producing regular cashflow forecasts
• Act as the main point of contact with the Banks and performing monthly bank reconciliations
• Assist in budget preparation and ongoing management activities, producing decision-making support to drive profitable, sustainable business growth
• Assist with the production of timely and accurate monthly management accounts and supporting financial analysis in accordance with company deadlines, monitoring the performance of the overall business P&L and balance sheet and key business drivers / initiatives vs. budget plan
• Conduct ongoing financial analysis to identify and resolve issues, opportunities and variances.
• Partner to the US sales and Ops teams, offering commercial finance analysis, challenging retailers chargebacks, monitoring customers and suppliers activities. Guardian of the US market
• Process the compensation and benefits program for Americas-based employees, ensuring data integrity and timely submission of data for internal approval and processing by the payroll bureau and benefits providers
• Ensure all financial processes for the CCP business in the US are robust and in line with the global CCP financial processes and comply with US laws
• Ensure local controls are in place which safeguard the organization while allowing the Americas business to scale effectively
• Oversee payment of state and federal payroll and state sales taxes.
• Work with the FD and external advisor
  • to ensure all appropriate State and Federal tax returns are completed and filed
  • to ensure all appropriate statutory company secretarial and corporate annual returns are made in a timely manner
  • to ensure the smooth running of the annual audit process
• Ensure the general administration of the local Americas business runs effectively, e.g. property, warehousing & logistics
• Collaborate with the wider finance team, based in Europe, on ad hoc and consolidating tasks

Requirements

• A minimum of a bachelor’s degree in finance, business administration, accounting or economics with 7-10 years’ experience in Finance working within organizations compliant with GAAP
• Able to clearly demonstrate a proactive and collaborative mindset, and a track record of identifying and supporting the implementation of improvements in business operations and performance
• Strong organization, time-management and problem-solving skills, with superior attention-to-detail
• Advanced skills within the Microsoft products – in particular Excel
• Strong team player, able to build relationships and communicate effectively with colleagues based remotely across the US and UK
• Experience of working in fragrance & beauty and/or luxury industry would be a benefit
• Knowledge of US tax and statutory accounts
• Appreciated background in CPG, Consumer Goods, Luxury Goods, Food & Beverage, FMCG, Wholesale, Retail (Altadis, Applica, Bacardi, Colgate, Diageo, Estee Lauder, General Mills, Imperial Tobacco, Johnson & Johnson, Kraft Foods, L’Oreal, LVMH, Macy’s, Moet Hennessy, Office Depot, P&G, Perry Ellis, Premier Beverage, Procter & Gamble, Reckitt Benckiser, Remy Cointreau, Southern Wine & Spirits, Spectrum Brands, Starboard, Unilever, Wal-Mart, )
• Appreciated previous titles: Controller, Finance Manager, Financial Analyst, Internal Auditor, Financial Auditor