Regional Finance and Accounting Director - EMEA

Azelis

Azelis is a leading global distributor of specialty chemicals and food ingredients, representing first-class manufacturers across various industries. Our activities are built on decades of experience. Founded in 2001, the company has grown rapidly both organically and through acquisitions and is now present in 65 countries, with 150+ legal entities. We generated over €4 billion revenues in 2023, and we employ more than 4,000 people globally with offices across Europe, Middle East and Africa, the United States, Canada, Latin Americas, as well as Asia Pacific. Our business is industry-focused and organized around Market Segments. Life Sciences includes a.o.: Personal Care, Home Care & Industrial Cleaning, Pharmaceuticals & Healthcare, Food & Nutrition, Animal Nutrition, and Agricultural & Environmental Solutions. Industrial Chemicals covers a.o.: CASE, Rubber & Plastic Additives, Lubricants & Metal Working Fluids.

The opportunity

Azelis services its accounting activities through several regional Shared Services Centres (SSC’s): Antwerp/Zagreb (EMEA), Leominster (Americas), and Shanghai/Malaysia (APAC).

Each of Azelis’ Regional SSC clusters is headed by a Regional Finance and Accounting Director.

To support Azelis’ growth, the SSC’s will further strategically expand its scoping with regard to accounting processes as well as with regard to the onboarding of additional legal entities.

Furthermore, the expansion will give ample room to further efficiency measures, including Robotic Process Automation (RPA), upgrading and alignment across the SSC’s as well as embedding a continuous improvement culture.

This enables the SSC’s to expand and to onboard further improvements in standard, uniform, effective and high quality processes and systems going forward, as a basis to move to a global business services model (GBS) on the longer term.

The Regional Finance and Accounting Director will be end responsible for managing and overseeing the operations of the local and regional accounting and finance departments. As knowledge expert the role will play an important role in the development, execution and enforcement of Azelis’ strategy in the area of Accounting and Finance operations and integration of acquisitions into the Finance and Accounting platforms. This role is part of three regional leadership teams with a clear ownership for the regional accounting functions that to support Azelis’ operations and growth organically and inorganically via M&A.

Reporting & Location

The EMEA Finance and Accounting Director will report to the EMEA Chief Financial Officer, with functional line to the Group Accounting Director. The role is located in Antwerp (Berchem, Belgium).

The Role

The mission of the Regional Finance and Accounting Director is to take end to end responsibility for Accounting and Finance Operations and to ensure the integrity and reliability of financial data, to improve the efficiency of the daily accounting processes.

The role takes ownership of the data in the financial systems of Azelis, drives policy and system process development and maintenance with the objective to ensure high quality standards. The role is responsible to manage the monthly, quarterly and annual closing of the Region under guidance of the Corporate Finance teams.

In this role, the Regional Finance and Accounting Director is responsible for one of the three Regional Shared Service Centres, including additional SSC Hubs, as well as the local accounting teams outside of the SSC’s.

Main Accountabilities

• Responsible for and manage financial operations of the Region, including month- and year-end process, general ledger, financial and sustainability reporting, budgeting and capital planning, fixed assets, payroll and expenditure variance analysis and income taxes.
• Responsible for the strategic direction, coordination, and evaluation of the Region’s accounting departments and the development of incorporating activities in the shared service center.
• Carry out supervisory responsibilities in accordance with Azelis’ policies and applicable laws and drives complexity reduction via “Scrum / Lean” principles.
• Acts as day to day replacement for Regional CFO and assists the Regional CFO in developing and implementing the company’s financial strategy, overseeing operations, helping to drive business growth and performance.
  
  

Shared Service Centre

• Manage together with your team the administrative transactional processes including “Purchase to pay”, “Order to cash” and “General ledger”, travel operations, finance, vendor and creditors management.
• End responsible for Personnel and Talent Development for the accounting operations in the region include interviewing, hiring, and training employees; planning, assigning, and directing work; appraising performance; rewarding and disciplining employees; addressing complaints and resolving problems.
• Ensure compliance with best practice SSC standards and Service Level Agreements (SLA’s).
• Provide and implement improvements of the current accounting/reporting system, processes and controls to ensure an accurate, complete and timely monthly reporting. To lead process improvement projects, improve systems and procedures and initiate corrective actions, including but not limited to RPA-initiatives, preparation and review of monthly balance sheet account reconciliations, and implementing best practice processes across the Region.
  
  

Accounting & Reporting

• Act as Regional knowledge expert for complex tax, accounting and statutory topics for the region such as but not limited to including financial reporting, cash management, budgeting, annual financial statement audit and income taxes. Supports the local controllers, regional CFO and Corporate teams in providing input for policy development.
• Responsible for the monthly closing of your region’s entities, including the reporting in the Group’s consolidation tool, balance sheet reconciliations and other reporting, in accordance with Azelis’ timelines, policies and procedures for the respective region.
• Establish and enforce proper accounting methods, processes, policies and internal controls, to assure that the Region’s balance sheet is protected. Monitor adherence with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and the Azelis Financial & Economic Manual (AFEM).
• Coordinate, organize and lead the planning and execution of external audits of the accounting records for the Region.
  
  

M&A and Systems

• Proactively support the M&A integration process from an accounting and process perspective.
• Provide necessary support on finance operations during the post-acquisition integration phase of newly acquired businesses and legal entities, including the migration/go-live of entities onto the group ERP system.
• Support the development of the Finance and Accounting Modules in the ERP system. This relates to planning of testing, implementing and signing off changes to the ERP System.
  
  

Experience & Education

The Regional Finance and Accounting Director is a curious personality that is used to work in an international environment. The Director will have the attitude to manage complex processes and systems, interactions with many different accounting staff across the Region, and enjoys to achieve improvements.

• Must possess very strong communication, organizational, technology and leadership skills;
• At least 8-10 years of experience, including management responsibility at an accounting firm and clear demonstrated abilities to manage larger teams.
• Comprehensive knowledge of generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), preferably of IFRS.
• A minimum of a University master’s degree in accounting but generally prefer also to have earned a master’s degree in business administration (MBA) or certification such as certified public accountant (CPA) or certified management accountant (CMA);
• Demonstrated ability to form, lead and develop high-performing teams; ability to work collaboratively across departmental functions;
• Detail oriented and structured approach, well organized; ability to multi-task and meet tight deadlines;
• Experience with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems and financial reporting tools. Notions of Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a plus;
• Fluent in English;
• Advanced accounting skills, comfort with working with large data sets;
• Hands-on mentality and proactive attitude;
• Easily adapt to changing environment and responsibilities based upon organizational needs.