Senior Accountant (Maternity Cover)

Informa is a leading international events, intelligence and scholarly research group.

We’re the specialist’s specialist. Through hundreds of powerful brands, we work with businesses and professionals in specialist markets, providing the connections, intelligence and opportunities that help customers grow, do business, make breakthroughs and take better informed decisions.

Informa is listed on London Stock Exchange and a member of FTSE 100, with over 11,000 colleagues working in more than 30 countries.

The position is a 9 months Fixed Term Contract (maternity cover) based in Hong Kong. Reporting into the Finance Manager based in Hong Kong, this is a key operational role which is accountable for delivering an accurate, high value consistent accounting service for your specific division/s. You will lead a team within the R2R function providing leadership and guidance to ensure your team delivers excellent accounting service to the business driving balance sheet integrity. You will be a high performing individual that embraces and drives change management processes whilst showing effective collaboration with your team and business counterparties. You will also ensure that all company policies are adhered to and that specific duties are carried out within set time limits whilst providing an excellent level of service to all Informa customers and colleagues.

Key Responsibilities:

The Senior Accountant is expected to assume the following key responsibilities plus any other reasonable duties as required:

• Responsible for the monthly close process of the Management Accounts for your division/s; Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet. Details include; Reconciliations, Accruals, Allocations, Revenue downloads, Pre-payments, Variance Analysis and commentary in accordance with the published timetable
• Be the main point of contact with the business for your division/s
• Ensure Balance Sheet reconciliations are completed in accordance with Balance Sheet Integrity guidelines and control frameworks
• Ensure that issues are escalated as appropriate to your Finance Manager in a timely manner.
• Responsible for Financial Reporting and Analysis including Group reporting, supplementary packs and ad-hoc requests
• Lead a team of R2R accounting professionals, ensuring that planning and prioritisation of work within the team is enough to maintain and improve team’s performance.  This may include managing the R2R service provided by the BPO if this is in the scope of your role. Managing the BPO includes ensuring that the BPO are delivering the service in line with contractual SLAs.
• Encourage an environment in which people value diversity either in recruitment, team formation and/or in developing plans and strategies.
• Publish financial results in the relevant finance systems
• Ensure communications are handled between the SSC, Group finance and the Business Teams
• To be involved with any acquisition integration/due diligence
• Working on projects within the SSC and department including key process testing & systems
• Working with internal and external auditors
• Assist in the accounting integration of new products into the SSC accounting structure and systems
• Analyse and solve Ad-hoc problems using knowledge of business and systems
• Tax & Compliance duties as required by your SSC

Leadership:

• Ensure that appropriate People Development tools are utilised throughout your team consistently and fairly to ensure optimum performance of all colleagues. Focus to develop on both technical and soft skill in alignment with local HR policies
• Ensure that planning and prioritization of work within the team is optimized to maintain and improve performance metrics
• Encourage an inclusive and diversity working environment in areas such as recruitment, team formation and/or in developing plans and strategies
• Bring team members into discussions so that they can contribute their ideas, are involved in setting team objectives and feel engaged on issues that affect them.
• Support, assist and cover team members where necessary

Qualifications & Experience

• Strong academic background, Accounting degree preferable
• A qualified accountant (CPA, ACA, ACCA or CIMA) with experience of leading an R2R team within a large R2R function preferable
• Excellent knowledge and understanding of all R2R processes including best practice in R2R, people, processes and technology
• Sound working knowledge and understanding of SSO processes and how these fit into the wider environment
• Confident in how to lead and guide a team through challenging periods.
• Be able to manage competing priorities and achieving deadlines, whilst delivering a high standard of work and supporting the team as and when needed.
• Solid at building relationships with stakeholders within and outside of the organisation.
• Evidence of making decisions at the right time based on the information available.
• Strong people manager who actively engages and embraces talent management conversations.
• Good presentation skills
• Proficiency in spoken and written English is a requirement.  Ability in any other Asian languages would be an advantage.

Skills & Abilities

• Good communication skills with the ability to build good relationships with a wide range of stakeholders, internal departments and key contacts
• Proficient skills in Excel, Word and Outlook are essential
• Remain approachable under pressure
• Act with integrity, tact and diplomacy
• Work as part of a team
• Ability to complete a variety of related tasks
• Pro-actively solve problems
• Excellent Customer Service skills
• Good time management skills
• Ability to be flexible within role
• Excellent oral and written communication skills
• Organised, diligent with attention to detail

We know that sometimes the 'perfect candidate' doesn't exist, and that people can be put off applying for a job if they don't fit all the requirements. If you're excited about working for us and have most of the skills or experience we're looking for, please go ahead and apply. You could be just what we need! We believe strongly in the value of diversity and creating supportive, inclusive environments where our colleagues can succeed. As such, Informa is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, or religious creed, mental or physical disability, medical condition, genetic information, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, citizenship, or other protected characteristics under local law.