Chief Financial Officer for an Exciting PE-backed Multi-site Leisure Business
Location: South West England
Hybrid working: 2/3 days on site
The Opportunity
We are working with a growing multi-site leisure business looking to appoint a commercially astute Chief Financial Officer to join the senior leadership team.
This is a key appointment for the business, with a clear mandate to strengthen the finance function, improve the quality of financial insight and support the next stage of growth.
The successful candidate will bring structure, rigour and commercial challenge to the organisation, ensuring finance operates as an effective business partner rather than simply a reporting function.
The role requires someone who can quickly understand the key drivers of performance across a multi-site environment, identify where greater financial discipline is required and provide the leadership team with clear, commercially relevant insight to support decision-making.
Key Responsibilities
- Support the leadership team on strategic initiatives, growth opportunities and wider value-creation projects.
- Assess the current finance function and implement improvements to structure, capability, controls and ways of working.
- Raise the quality and consistency of management information, ensuring reporting provides meaningful insight into business and site-level performance.
- Develop a stronger performance management framework, with clear KPIs and financial visibility across the group.
- Partner with operational leaders to identify performance improvement opportunities and drive stronger commercial decision-making.
- Improve forecasting capability and financial planning, enabling the business to make better-informed investment and growth decisions.
- Strengthen financial governance and ensure the business has an appropriate control environment to support its scale and ambitions.
The Candidate
The successful candidate will be an experienced CFO, Finance Director or senior finance leader with a strong track record of improving finance functions and adding commercial value within an operational business.
Experience within a multi-site, consumer-facing environment would be highly advantageous, particularly within leisure, hospitality, retail, healthcare or another location-based business.
The emphasis is on appointing a high-quality finance leader who can improve the effectiveness of the function, provide greater commercial insight and become a trusted partner to the CEO and leadership team.
You are likely to demonstrate:
- Strong commercial judgement and the ability to influence senior stakeholders.
- A track record of strengthening and professionalising finance functions.
- Experience operating within a multi-site or operationally complex organisation.
- The ability to identify the key drivers of performance and translate financial data into clear commercial actions.
- Strong leadership capability with experience developing high-performing finance teams.
- A pragmatic, hands-on style with the ability to operate strategically while remaining close enough to the detail.
- Confidence challenging existing ways of working and driving improvement.
- ACA, ACCA or CIMA qualification.