مراقب مالي إقليمي

Regional Financial Controller

About the Role

We are seeking a commercially astute and technically strong Regional Financial Controller (Business Partner – Accounting) to lead financial control for one of our regions (KSA, GCC, or North Africa & Levant) within our multi-national operations.

In this role, you will be the bridge between the business and the Group Accounting Centre of Excellence. You will own the integrity of the regional P&L and balance sheet, ensure the Centre of Excellence receives complete and timely business inputs, and act as the closest sparring partner of FP&A, ensuring the numbers reported for the region are accurate, well understood, and decision-ready. This role requires strong technical accounting combined with the business partnering presence to engage with market leadership, the Head of Accounting, FP&A, and external auditors in a listed-company environment.

Key Responsibilities

1. P&L & Balance Sheet Integrity

• Own the quality of the regional P&L for all legal entities and brands in scope: correct revenue recognition, classification, cut-off, accruals, and cost allocations, with monthly variance and reasonableness reviews against budget, forecast, and prior periods before results are released.
• Own the integrity of the regional balance sheet: ensure every account is reconciled, reviewed, and signed off monthly, with clear ownership, supporting evidence, and aged or unreconciled items escalated and cleared.
• Review and challenge judgemental balance sheet positions, including inventory valuation, fixed assets and capex capitalisation, right-of-use assets and lease liabilities (IFRS 16), provisions, and impairment indicators for underperforming stores.
• Monitor working capital balances for the region (aggregator and payment platform receivables, supplier payables, accruals, and prepayments) with Treasury, ensuring balances are valid, recoverable, and correctly stated.
• Act as first line of financial control for the region: monitor compliance with Group accounting policies, delegation of authority, and internal controls, and drive remediation of audit and internal-audit findings.

2. Business Partnering & Close Support

• Be the single finance point of contact for market General Managers and functional heads on accounting matters: new store openings, closures, promotions, aggregator agreements, franchise and royalty arrangements, leases and capex.
• Translate business events into accounting requirements and make sure the Centre of Excellence receives the inputs it needs (accruals, contracts, approvals, operational data) on time for the close calendar.
• Partner with FP&A on month-end analysis, forecasts and budgets so that actuals and forecasts are prepared on a consistent basis and the commentary explains what actually happened.
• Support the drive toward a 5-day close by removing regional bottlenecks, standardising inputs and pushing recurring entries toward automation.

3. Master Data, Governance & Compliance

• Approve and check master data changes for the region (cost centres, store codes, vendors, chart-of-accounts mapping) to protect reporting quality.
• Coordinate with Statutory Reporting & Tax on statutory financial statements, VAT, Zakat/CIT and withholding tax positions for the region's entities, including local regulatory filings.
• Act as regional contact for external auditors (interim and year-end), ensuring audit requests are met on time and adjustments are minimised.
• Support related-party, intercompany and transfer pricing processes so that intercompany balances reconcile and eliminate cleanly at Group level.

4. Process Improvement & People

• Contribute to the Finance process redesign and the ERP/EPM roadmap: identify manual work, data quality gaps and control weaknesses, and help design and test the fixes.
• Promote use of data and AI tools in daily work (analytics, automated reconciliations, anomaly detection) as part of the Group's finance AI culture.
• Coach and develop accountants in the region and in the Centre of Excellence on business understanding, building a pipeline for future controller roles.

Required Qualifications & Experience

• Education: Bachelor's degree in accounting or finance.
• Professional Certification: CPA, ACCA, CMA or equivalent is highly preferred.
• Experience: 8–12 years of progressive experience in accounting and financial control, including at least 3 years as Financial Controller, Finance Manager or Senior Accounting Manager with ownership of a full P&L and balance sheet.
• Strong technical command of IFRS, especially IFRS 16 (leases), IFRS 15 (revenue, including franchise and aggregator arrangements) and inventory accounting.
• Experience in retail, food & beverage (F&B), or multi-unit operational business models — particularly cash-intensive, high-transaction-volume environments — is a major plus.
• Experience operating in a listed-company or multinational group environment with a shared services or Centre of Excellence model is preferred.
• Systems: Hands-on experience with enterprise ERP (Oracle preferred, or SAP) and consolidation/EPM tools; advanced Excel; Power BI or similar reporting tools is a strong advantage.
• Languages: Business fluency in English is required; Arabic (written and spoken) is a strong advantage