Commercial Finance Manager

About the role:

We have a great opportunity for a Commercial Finance Manager to join our Birmingham office. This is an award winning team having won " Finance Team of the Year ", "Excellence in Diversity" "Business Innovation" and "Finance Director of the Year" at the West Midlands Finance Awards in 2019.

This role is required to provide clear and strong financial challenge to the Legal Groups and Business Services departments, and day-to-day support to Team Leaders (TL) and Business Services Directors in improving business performance, and developing and delivering agreed business plans.

This role will be responsible for the business planning, budgeting and financial management of the allocated legal groups ranging from 27 – 37 Partners with fees between £28m and 63m and Business Services teams (approx. £65m cost base). The key relationships as a Commercial Finance Manager will be:

• Internal – Commercial Director, COO / CFO, Practice Group Leaders (PGLs), Team leaders (TLs), Partners, Managing Fee Earners (MFEs), Business Services Directors and teams
• External – Clients, Audit team, Business Consultants, Suppliers, Finance Networks

"Our Finance team includes almost 70 dedicated finance professionals. They sit in several specialist teams, including Accounting and Tax, Commercial Finance and Finance Operations."

About you:

We are looking for someone who is ACA, ACCA or CIMA qualified, with a strong communication style and the ability to present complex financial data and concepts in a clear concise way to non-financial professionals. To this role you will bring a highly developed analytical and financial modelling skills supported with a robust commercial acumen and strong people management and development skills. Within this role you will have relationships across the firm to individuals at all levels and therefore will need to be confident in your ability to influence and persuade challenging colleagues and partners.

For this role it would be desirable but not essential to have the following:

• Exposure to legal sector or professional services firms.
• Strong problem solving skills and the ability to work under pressure in a fast paced and challenging environment
• Use of, and familiarity with, IBM Cognos (or similar planning, budgeting and/or forecasting software tools)

What We Can Offer You:

The opportunity to work for a firm which has been recognised as one of the top 10 best places to work in the UK and has been ranked by Great Place to Work® for 22 consecutive years.

Excellent benefits, including:

• A hybrid approach to office and remote working, with up to 50% remote working available.
• 25 days annual leave, with the option to buy up to a week's extra annual leave
• Free private medical insurance, and the option to add family members
• A generous pension allowance
• Life assurance covering four times your annual salary
• The chance of a three-month sabbatical every five years
• Maternity, paternity and adoption leave schemes
• A range of health and wellbeing programmes
• State of the art offices, in the heart of Birmingham City Centre, with an onsite restaurant
• Opportunities to flourish in your role through training and personal development

Equal Opportunities:

Gowling WLG is committed both to promoting equality and diversity in the firm and to Equal Opportunities in employment. The firm believes in equality of opportunity regardless of race or racial group (including colour, nationality, ethnicity, national origins), religion or belief, age, disability, sexual orientation, sex, gender re-assignment and gender identity, marriage and civil partnership, and pregnancy, maternity and paternity. This also includes any incidents of perceptive or associative discrimination and harassment.

At Gowling WLG we seek to attract and retain talented people from a diverse range of backgrounds and cultures, to create an exciting and rewarding place to work. Our aim is to fulfil everyone's potential and together to achieve personal and business goals.

If you have any queries in relation to this position or would like to see a full job description please contact Meg Astley at meg.astley@gowlingwlg.com

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