Group Finance Director in Leeds

Everlast Group is an established specialist construction business operating across waterproofing, rail, scaffolding, facades and specialist surveys. Founded in 1999, the Group has grown into a substantial business, targeting revenues of c.£70m this year. In recent years, the shape of the Group has evolved significantly, with facades now representing a much greater proportion of overall activity alongside Everlast's established specialist contracting businesses.

The Group continues to self-deliver work across its core markets, while also seeing increasing opportunity to take on broader responsibility for projects, including acting as main contractor and coordinating specialist subcontractors where appropriate. That direction of travel has the potential to take Everlast into larger and increasingly complex projects, bringing with it broader commercial, regulatory and delivery responsibilities. As the business grows, this places greater importance on coordination, planning, risk management and the flow of timely, reliable information across the Group.

Supporting the business' development is an experienced and respected senior team with considerable knowledge of Everlast, its people, customers and markets. The business has strong technical capability, long-standing relationships and a substantial platform from which to develop.

This appointment comes ahead of the current FD's planned retirement after ten successful years with the business. He leaves an established finance team and will provide a comprehensive handover. His successor will therefore inherit sound foundations while having genuine scope to influence what comes next.

The executive team know the business, its customers and its markets extremely well and are ambitious about its future. The new Finance Director will work alongside them helping to assess opportunities, guide decisions and turn the Group’s plans into sustainable commercial progress.

Everlast’s current plan targets revenue of c.£90m by 2030, although growth for its own sake is not the objective. The Group sees scope to develop its existing businesses organically, bring its capabilities closer together, enter aligned markets and make selective acquisitions. The ambition is to create a stronger, more integrated, cash-generative and increasingly valuable business.

The Finance Director will be directly involved in decisions about scale, efficiency, investment, funding, business priorities, new markets, acquisitions and the development of the Group’s existing operations. Finance needs to be woven more deeply into the business, supporting decision-making across the Group. The successful candidate will improve the flow of information and communication between finance, commercial and operations, bring greater clarity to planning and forecasting, and help teams make better decisions together. This is as much about conversations, relationships and organisational cohesion as it is about producing reports.

There is also a strong platform within finance from which to build. Everlast has an experienced and committed finance team, and the opportunity now is to develop the function further as the Group continues to grow and evolve. Priorities include enhancing the speed and quality of management information, building even greater visibility of contract margin, WIP, cash and working capital, continuing to develop the team and introducing a more integrated, technology-led platform. The aim is to build on what is already working well, creating simpler, scalable processes, stronger insight and a finance function that can support a business with increasing pace and complexity.

Everlast is a direct, energetic and informal business. Its senior team knows the industry exceptionally well and will expect the Finance Director to be curious, visible and interested in how work is won and delivered. They want somebody they can trust and involve: a colleague who listens, asks good questions, expresses an independent view and knows how to challenge constructively. They are not looking for automatic agreement, but neither do they want someone whose answer to every new idea is "no".

Applicants must be qualified accountants (ACA, ACCA or ACMA) with substantial senior finance leadership experience. You are likely to be an established Finance Director or CFO, or a senior group or divisional finance leader with clear evidence that you are ready to take full responsibility for the finance agenda. Technical ability matters, but so does commercial judgement, resilience, communication, change leadership and the ability to bring people with you.

Construction experience could be useful, but it is not essential. Relevant experience might have been gained in a range of project-led, operational or commercially complex businesses, and we are deliberately open-minded about sector background. More important is an understanding of the commercial and financial dynamics of a business where contracts, projects and operational delivery influence revenue, margin and cash. You will be comfortable getting beneath project economics, WIP, working capital, liquidity and commercial risk, and able to apply that understanding as the business grows and takes on larger and more complex opportunities.

This is a role for somebody who wants to be close to the decisions, help turn ambition into practical plans and see the effect of their contribution across the business. Over time, there is also potential to participate in future equity, subject to performance, contribution and the structure of the next transaction.

The package is £120,000–£140,000 plus benefits, bonus and planned LTIP.