UK Commercial Finance Lead in London

This is a unique opportunity to business partner with one of the top countries contributing to IWG Profitability. You will provide strategic and operational financial direction, ensuring robust financial control and compliance through strong collaboration with the Group CFO and Global Shared Service Centre (SSC). You will work closely with the UK CEO and leadership team driving revenue growth and profitability as well as contributing to our cash targets. Ensuring compliance with Group, legal and regulatory requirements, identifying and managing risk will be an important part of the role and will allow the person to work with multiple stakeholders across the organisation. This role will serve as a key member of the regional and group leadership teams, with full accountability for the financial leadership and performance of the UK business within a publicly listed, global organisation. It requires a commercially astute and technically strong leader who can operate effectively within a complex, matrixed, and internationally integrated environment.

Key Responsibilities

• Work with the UK CEO and ensure that business and financial plans are in place and that these meet IWG targets for profitability, growth and liquidity.
• Lead financial planning, budgeting, and forecasting processes for the UK, ensuring alignment with the FP&A team.
• Drive meaningful performance analysis of the business against the plans and history and provide financial insight into the effects of the business plans to the management team.
• Identify divergence from plans and ensure remedial actions are in place in a timely manner by working with the UK SLT.
• Partner with the Finance leadership team, UK CEO to provide financial insight that supports business performance, growth, and capital efficiency.
• Build strong relationships across global finance, SSC leadership, and operational stakeholders.
• Review and own all significant investments in the business including acquisition investments and integration, new centre openings, centre closures, expansions, contractions and all significant refurbishments, ensuring that Group ROI targets are met.
• Provide short- and medium-term performance forecasts as required.
• Drive profitability and cost reductions through financial analysis, cost optimisation and value driven decision supporting.
• Ensure the cash resources are managed efficiently and in compliance with IWG policies.
• Generally, the oversight of local legal projects/advice will also be part of this role.

Governance and Compliance

• Governance and compliance activities are to be carried out in conjunction with IWG Group functions such as Group Finance, Group Treasury, Shared Service centres.
• Act as the key business partner to the Global Shared Service Centre, ensuring high-quality, timely, and accurate transactional finance outputs (AP, AR, GL, payroll, etc.).
• Ensure compliance with all IWG Group policies including accounting policies, treasury policies, HR, Legal and business ethics policies.
• Ensure compliance with all relevant local legal and regulatory requirements including accounting, tax (direct and indirect), and statutory filings by working with the statutory and tax teams.
• Be the face of IWG UK with local regulatory entities including accountants, auditors, tax and other government agencies.
• Ensure processes are in place to make local management and employees aware of and comply with Group policies as relevant to their role.
• Monitor and assess the impact of all changes (actual and prospective) to local legal and regulatory requirements. Ensure relevant Group functions are aware of changes in a timely manner.
• Monitor and assess all changes to Group policies in relation to local legal and regulatory requirements.
• Identify all conflicts between Group policies and local legal and regulatory requirements. Ensure that Group functions are aware of any conflicts and that mitigation actions are in place.

Risk Management

• Working with the local management and Group functions, proactively monitor all actual or potential areas of business risk including:
• Litigation threats
• Customer risk including customer solvency, bad debts, large customer risk, reputational risk.
• Supplier risk including large supplier dependence, supplier solvency.
• Tax risks
• Currency and exchange risk
• Fraud and business ethics risks
• Health & Safety

Ensure all actual and potential risks identified are communicated to the relevant Group functions (e.g. internal audit, legal, group finance, tax etc). Ensure risk mitigation strategies are in place. Ensure compliance with all Group risk mitigation strategies including Internal Audit reviews; Business Operating Model (BOM) compliance; Treasury and cash policies including guarantees, deposits (customer and supplier), loans/overdrafts, intercompany invoice processes, dividends and cash management.

Business Process Efficiency

• Contribute to business process efficiency through:
• Ensuring compliance with Group organisation and processes
• Identify opportunities for process improvement, automation, and technology enablement across finance operations.
• Contributing to all Group efficiency programs.

Non-Core Responsibilities

The local business organisation may result in the Finance Director taking ownership of responsibilities and activities that would not normally fall within their core role. In addition, the Finance Director may bring with them experience and ability that IWG wishes to exploit. Such activities may include:

• Procurement
• Contract negotiation including lease renewal negotiation
• Relationship management e.g. landlords, suppliers, key customers
• Tax advice
• Employee issues (terminations, performance management)
• Insurance claims and recoveries
• Litigation
• Debt collection

Skills, Experience & Qualifications

• Qualified accountant (ACA, ACCA, CIMA or equivalent).
• Extensive experience in senior finance leadership roles within a UK PLC or listed multinational environment.
• Strong technical knowledge of IFRS and US GAAP, statutory reporting, and corporate governance.
• Proven experience collaborating with or leading a global/shared service centre model.
• Demonstrated ability to influence at Board level and communicate effectively with investors, auditors, and regulators.
• Strong commercial acumen and experience in driving operational performance.

Desirable

• Exposure to international group structures, multiple currencies, and cross-border reporting.
• Experience with ERP transformation or finance process optimisation.
• Prior experience with M&A integration, investor relations, or capital markets activity.

Personal Attributes

• Strategic thinker with a hands-on, delivery-focused approach.
• Exceptional leadership and stakeholder management skills.
• High integrity and professional credibility.
• Adaptable and resilient in a fast-paced, complex global environment.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving capability, with attention to detail.

About the company

IWG has been at the forefront of flexible working for more than 30 years. With over 5,400 locations around the globe, spanning brands including Regus, Spaces, Signature and HQ, we have made it possible for businesses of all sizes to make the transition to hybrid working, empowering employees to work wherever and whenever is most convenient. We help more than 8 million people and their businesses to work more productively, supported by a choice of professional, inspiring and collaborative workspaces, communities and services. As the world's leading provider of hybrid work solutions, with four times the number of locations compared to its nearest competitor, IWG is already working with over 80% of the Fortune 500 and counts businesses including Amazon, Netflix, EY and Uber amongst its customers. Companies of all sizes are shifting to flexible working to lower costs, improve employee retention and lower their carbon emissions. The flexible workspace is expected to grow by 600% by 2023, when 30% of all office space will be hybrid. We are growing our network faster than ever to keep up with demand from customers as we work towards our goal of reaching 30,000 centres.

Carbon Neutral Workplaces

IWG's purpose of helping everyone have a great day at work, while protecting people and the planet is at the heart of everything we do. We are proud to supply all of our customers worldwide with carbon neutral workplaces, and we have a strong climate action plan in place to help us achieve our objective of Net Zero emissions by 2040.

Leading Employer Award

IWG is proud to be the recipient of a Leading Employer Award in both 2022 and 2023. Awarded exclusively to the top 1% of employers, the accolade is testament to our diverse global workforce and the role everyone plays in bringing our purpose, culture and values to life, every single day.