Unilever
Finance Director - Europe FET
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Finance Director - Europe FET
Reporting into: Greg Glanville
Work Level: WL3X
Location: Kingston / Netherlands
JOB PURPOSE
Europe is one of Unilever’s largest and most strategically important regions: fast-moving, highly competitive and central to our growth, profit and cash ambitions.
At the centre of this is the Europe Finance Excellence Team: a critical finance engine for the region, connecting performance, forecasting, reporting, cash, controls and insight to help Europe move faster and deliver.
This is a standout leadership role. The Europe FET Director leads a sizeable, multi-location team, partners all European Business Units, and works directly with the Europe Finance Leadership Team, including BU CFOs and National Finance Directors, the Regional Data & Analytics Hub and Global Finance partners.
The role offers real scale and broad commercial impact. It is a great opportunity for a finance leader who wants to lead through others, strengthen core finance delivery, build a strong talent pipeline and ensure Europe has the financial discipline, reporting clarity and process confidence needed to deliver well.
The role reports to the PC Business Unit CFO, is part of the European Finance Leadership Team, and partners all BUs across Europe.
RESPONSIBILITIES
The Europe FET Director leads the finance engine that underpins Europe’s reporting, controls, S&OP, cash and budget control agenda. The role brings together core areas across R2R, controls and S&OP, budget control, cash and hub-based delivery, ensuring clear ownership, strong discipline and effective support to the business.
Performance Governance, Reporting and Cash:
- Lead the monthly and quarterly Europe finance review process, ensuring actuals and forecasts are brought together accurately and clearly for senior finance review.
- Ensure accurate, timely and controlled reporting across Europe, working closely with Business Units, Global Management Reporting, Global Performance Management and Controllers.
- Provide clear visibility of Europe’s cash performance, partnering Global Performance Management and local cash teams to strengthen discipline, accountability and action.
- Support clear follow-up on material reporting, control or forecast issues, working with Controllers and Business Unit finance teams to ensure actions are understood and progressed.
- Support Global Performance Management and Internal Audit where required, ensuring Europe’s finance processes remain robust, controlled and well governed.
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Forecasting, S&OP and Finance Delivery:
The role leads Europe’s S&OP, forecasting, cash-up and budget control processes for Finance, ensuring clear assumptions, disciplined execution and reliable outputs for the business.
- Lead the Finance agenda across the Europe S&OP and forecasting cycle, ensuring a single aligned volume and value plan for the business.
- Ensure cash-up is run with discipline and quality, translating agreed volume forecasts into reliable financial forecasts using the right value assumptions and controls.
- Strengthen the connection between demand planning, S&OP and finance, helping reduce volume-value disconnects and improving confidence in the forecast.
- Oversee Budget Control for National Management overheads and support effective tools and ways of working for wider overheads and Brand Marketing Investment management.
- Drive simplification and standardisation across S&OP, cash-up and budget control ways of working, reducing manual effort and making delivery easier and more effective for teams and stakeholders.
People, Capability and Digital Finance:
- Lead, coach and develop a large, diverse and multi-location FET team, creating clarity, accountability and strong engagement.
- Build the capability and confidence of the FET leadership team, ensuring people are empowered to deliver, grow and lead through others.
- Strengthen FET as a finance talent pipeline, giving people strong experience in reporting, forecasting, controls, cash, analytics and business partnering.
- Lead the Digital Finance agenda in a practical way, improving the use of tools, data and analytics to support better business decisions.
- Build strong networks across Unilever Europe and global finance to share best practice, improve delivery and connect Europe to broader Unilever capability.
Key Stakeholders:
- European Finance Leadership Team
- National Finance Directors
- Business Group FP&A
- Global Performance Management
- Central FET and the OC based in Poland
- UniOps and support teams based in India
- UEBV SC Finance
- Global Procurement
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ALL ABOUT YOU
This role will suit a strong finance leader who enjoys scale, senior stakeholder influence and developing people. You will be comfortable leading through others, bringing structure to complex work, and helping teams turn financial information into clear insight, disciplined follow-up and better decision support.
Key Leadership Qualities:
- Strong people leader with experience leading through others and building capability across a sizeable team.
- Able to lead a complex, multi-location organisation with clarity, structure and strong accountability.
- Commercially sharp, with the confidence to challenge constructively and influence senior finance and business leaders.
- Strong stakeholder management skills, with the ability to build trust across markets, Business Units and global teams.
- High personal ownership, resilience and the ability to bring energy and focus in a fast-moving environment.
- Passion for developing finance talent and creating a strong, inclusive and high-performing team culture.
Professional Skills and Experience:
- Professional finance qualification or equivalent senior finance experience.
- Strong financial fundamentals, with experience in reporting, forecasting, controls, cash, performance governance or finance operations.
- Excellent engagement, presentation and communication skills, with the ability to land clear messages with senior stakeholders.
- Proven ability to simplify complex financial processes and translate data into clear business insight.
- Experience leading teams, ideally across more than one geography, market or functional area.
- Track record of improving processes, strengthening governance and building more resilient ways of working.
Terms & Conditions
Local UKI or Netherlands as applicable.
NOTES
By applying for this vacancy, you are confirming that you have made your Line Manager aware of your application and that you are at a point in your career with Unilever where it is appropriate for you to be applying for other positions.
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