Fastmarkets
Senior Financial Analyst - Investment Portfolio (12 month FTC)
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Job Description
Fastmarkets is an industry-leading price-reporting agency (PRA) and information provider for global commodities, providing price data, news, analytics and events for the agriculture, forest products, metals and mining and new-generation energy markets.
Fastmarkets' data is critical for customers seeking to understand and predict dynamic, sometimes opaque markets, enabling trading and risk management. Fastmarkets is a global business with a history dating back to 1865 and is built on trust and deep market knowledge. It has more than 700 employees spread across global locations in the UK, US, China, India, Singapore, Brazil, Belgium, Bulgaria, Finland and beyond.
Job Description
This 12-month fixed-term Senior Financial Analyst role has been created to establish and embed a robust project accounting capability across Fastmarkets' portfolio of material investment projects. The role will provide dedicated project accounting, financial analysis and reporting support, strengthening financial governance over project spend, cost allocation, benefits tracking and audit evidence across capital expenditure, operating expenditure, exceptional costs and project-related income.
The role is delivery-focused and combines operational project accounting with process design and governance. A key objective will be to establish sustainable controls, reporting disciplines, documentation standards and ways of working that can support an expanding investment portfolio and provide clear, decision-useful insight to senior leadership. The successful candidate will be responsible for embedding scalable project accounting processes, supporting audit and capitalisation requirements, and creating a sustainable operating model capable of transitioning to a permanent resource within Fastmarkets' Finance Hub in Sofia as the project portfolio matures.
This role will suit a commercially minded finance professional who can bring structure, control and clear reporting discipline to complex, fast-moving projects. Success will depend on combining strong technical accounting awareness with pragmatic stakeholder engagement and the ability to turn project data into clear financial insight.
Key Responsibilities
The responsibilities below cover five core areas: monthly project accounting and reporting, business case governance, time and cost capture, benefits tracking, and stakeholder engagement across Finance and project teams.
Project Accounting, Cost Control & Reporting
- Lead the monthly project accounting and reporting cycle across the investment project portfolio, establishing and maintaining standards for inputs, assumptions, timelines and evidence requirements.
- Track project actuals against approved business cases and budgets, providing clear analysis of variances, risks, dependencies and expected financial outcomes.
- Maintain end-to-end visibility of project spend and allocation across capex, opex and exceptional costs, ensuring each cost category is clearly defined, evidenced and reported.
- Produce clear, senior stakeholder reporting and analysis focused on insight, risks, trade-offs and potential actions rather than raw data.
- Maintain visibility across a portfolio that may include technology and product development, internal efficiency initiatives and outsourcing programmes.
Business Case, Governance & Technical Accounting
- Work with project sponsors, project managers and Finance stakeholders to ensure appropriate project accounting documentation is in place and signed off before projects commence.
- Support the preparation and review of business cases, ensuring robust cost allocation across capital expenditure, exceptional costs, EBITDA-impacting spend and other relevant financial categories.
- Work with Financial Control to support the assessment and application of appropriate technical accounting treatment, including capitalisation, expensing, exceptional or non-recurring items and project-related provisions where applicable.
- Ensure consistency between project reporting, management reporting and statutory accounting, with clear audit trails and supporting documentation.
- Prepare and maintain required audit and exit documentation for each material project.
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Time, Activity & Cost Capture
- Lead the design, implementation and adoption of a consistent time and cost tracking approach for project teams, enabling accurate attribution of people time and activity to specific projects.
- Maintain evidence of the type of work performed, by whom and for which project, using this documentation to support monthly capitalisation calculations where applicable.
- Ensure purchase orders, invoices, staff costs and other project costs are recorded accurately against the appropriate project codes and cost categories.
- Provide timely inputs to the Record-to-Report team to enable monthly journals, including capitalisation journals, to be posted accurately and with suitable supporting evidence.
Benefits, Portfolio Oversight & Continuous Improvement
- Track and evidence project benefits in line with approved assumptions, highlighting areas where realism, phasing, dependencies or supporting evidence may require review.
- Provide consolidated reporting on project cost progression, benefits delivery and forecast outlook across the active investment project portfolio.
- Apply consistent definitions, assumptions and methodologies across projects, and review inputs for accuracy, completeness and realism.
- Identify opportunities to improve project accounting processes, controls, data flows and reporting cadence as the portfolio matures.
Systems, Tools & Process Integration
- Use Anaplan, NetSuite, Excel and other available finance tools to support forecasting, cost tracking, reporting and scenario analysis across projects.
- Use HiBob and workforce planning data where relevant to support people cost tracking, headcount-related changes and investment portfolio reporting requirements.
- Support sustainable links between project, people and finance data to improve accuracy, repeatability and auditability.
- Use Microsoft Office tools to deliver high-quality analysis, reporting and senior stakeholder materials.
Stakeholder Management
- Work closely with Finance Business Partners, Financial Control, project sponsors and project managers to align project reporting with forecasting, performance management and statutory reporting requirements.
- Engage with HR Business Partners and workforce planning stakeholders where people-related project costs, role changes or transformation activities need to be reflected in project reporting.
- Provide evidence-based insight to support stakeholder discussions, helping to identify trade-offs, risks and potential actions to close gaps versus plan.
- Act as a reliable project accounting contact for the Commercial Finance team, relevant project leadership and wider investment project stakeholders throughout the contract period.
Key Stakeholders
- Head of Business Partnering and Commercial Finance team
- Finance Business Partners
- Financial Control and Record-to-Report teams
- Project sponsors, project managers and initiative owners
- Human Resources Business Partners and Workforce Planning stakeholders
- Senior Leadership Team and Executive Stakeholders
Qualifications
We recruit talented, dynamic people with diverse backgrounds and experiences, all united by a belief in our mission to provide the world’s leading and most trusted price reporting, events, and intelligence service for the markets we serve. We’re proud to be an equal opportunities employer and are committed to creating a fully inclusive workplace, where everyone feels able to participate and contribute meaningfully.
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Knowledge, Experience and Skills
We are looking for an individual who is highly motivated, driven, and have a passion to be part of a fast-paced, successful team. Being a strong team player is also important as well as someone who is happy to work flexibly.
Essential
- Strong financial analysis, project accounting, modelling and reporting experience gained in an FP&A, commercial finance or financial control environment, with experience supporting senior stakeholders in a complex or fast-changing business.
- Good understanding of project accounting principles, including cost tracking, capitalisation, expensing, exceptional items, audit evidence and month-end journal processes.
- Proven ability to translate complex project and financial data into clear insight and practical analysis, producing senior stakeholder reporting to tight timelines.
- Experience working with complex datasets and partnering with Financial Control or Record-to-Report teams on technical accounting considerations.
- Advanced Excel skills and strong PowerPoint capability; able to operate independently, prioritise effectively and deliver against clearly defined objectives.
- Delivery-focused, structured and pragmatic; comfortable working across multiple projects and stakeholders in a fast-paced environment.
- Clear communicator who can adapt messaging for senior and Board-level audiences, working collaboratively and staying focused on outcomes.
Desirable
- Qualified or part-qualified accountant (CIMA, ACCA, ACA), or equivalent experience in FP&A, commercial finance or project accounting at Senior Analyst level.
- Experience with Anaplan, NetSuite and/or HR systems such as HiBob.
- Previous exposure to time-bound transformation, investment project or portfolio reporting roles.
- Experience within media, information services or subscription-based businesses.
If you're excited about the role but your experience, skills or qualifications don't perfectly align, we encourage you to apply anyway.
Additional Information
Our Values
Fastmarkets people come from all different walks of life. It’s this mix of brilliant personalities, experiences and insights that gives us that warm, open, and friendly culture you can feel as soon as you meet us. But however wonderfully different we all are, there are six things we all have in common – and they form our Fastmarkets values.
Created by our own employees to reflect some of the personal traits that Fastmarkets people have, our values are key to what makes our culture unique. They reflect who each of us are and they're embedded in everything we do. Our values are:
- METRICS DRIVEN. We use insights to improve our customers’ experience and our business performance
- ACCOUNTABLE. We are accountable to ourselves and those we work with: we keep our promises and get things done
- GROWTH MINDSET. This value enables us to be nimble to the changing realities and operate with a sense of urgency
- INCLUSIVE. We are inclusive and respectful, celebrating each of us and giving everyone a deep sense of belonging with the desire to bring their best self to work every day.
- CUSTOMER CENTRIC. We are customer-centric in all that we do
- COLLABORATIVE. We are collaborative, able to work across teams and capitalise on the diversity of intellect, perspectives, and experiences.
We are committed to ensuring all candidates feel welcomed and supported. Should your application advance and you require accommodations for the interview process, please inform us so we can make
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