Job description
Company 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 600 employees spread across global locations in the UK, US, China, India, Singapore, Brazil, Belgium, Finland and beyond.

Job Description

The Rolе

As a senior member of the Finance team, the Lead Accountant, along with the Group Reporting Manager and the other Lead Accountant, jointly owns the financials for Fastmarkets, and plays a key part in managing, developing & nurturing the talent in the team. As a key support for the Head of Group Reporting and Tax, the right candidate will thrive on being given ownership, be a proactive self-starter with a high level of attention to detail and enjoy working with stakeholders both in Finance and across the wider business.

Principal Accountabilities
• Manage, coach and develop a high performing team of Management Accountants leading by example.
• Help to maintain robust financial control and reporting environment, recommending processes, procedures and enhancements as appropriate.
• Prepare and review management accounts to ensure they are in accordance with company policy and applicable accounting standards. Present them to relevant stakeholders.
• Review monthly balance sheet reconciliations, ensuring balances are fully substantiated.
• Prepare and review monthly commentary on performance against budget, forecast and prior year for businesses under ownership.
• Review calculation of monthly commissions and annual bonuses against documented incentive schemes.
• Support business stakeholders with their management information needs.
• Work closely with the commercial finance team on budgeting and reforecasting.
• Challenge established thinking by applying sound, impartial and professional judgement.
• Ensure that processes and controls are globally aligned, consistent and coordinated. Share best practice across division and department.
• Foster and embody a culture of collaboration across the pillar, division, department and company.
• Other ad-hoc tasks and projects as assigned by the Head of Group Reporting and Tax.

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.

If you are open-minded, curious, resilient, solutions-oriented and committed to promoting equality, then read on...

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.

KEY INTERFACES
• Finance Leadership Team
• Finance Teams including Commercial Finance and FP&A
• Business Departments

KNOWLEDGE, EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS
• Effective coach and team leader
• Ability to multi-task and time manage effectively and to tight deadlines
• Ability to manage upwards and effectively
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills
• Excellent attention to detail and analytical skills
• Ability to present complex information effectively to a variety of audiences
• Knowledge of effective control environment and processes
• Set and generate a professional persona and act as an ambassador of finance.

EXPERIENCE
• ACA, CIMA, ACCA or equivalent qualification
• Experience of managing direct reports
• Experience in the subscriptions, publishing or events sector preferable
• Strong excel skills (advanced level essential)
• Intermediate knowledge of the following systems preferable: Netsuite, Salesforce and Anaplan

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.

You’ve read a little about us – now it’s over to you!

If you like what you’ve read so far and think you can see yourself as a Fastmarkets person, it’s time to fill in your application form. This form is an important part of the selection process: it’s used to determine whether or not you’ll be chosen to have an interview and acts as a basis for the questions we’ll ask you on the day.

It’s vital that you try to capture all the relevant information we have asked for on the form so we can get a good feel for who you are and why you’re great.