Finance Analyst - External Reporting

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My client, a well known Telecommunications company based in Central London, is currently seeking a Financial Analyst to join their external reporting team.
Prospective candidates should be ACA or ACCA fully qualified, with a minimum of 3 years post qual experience. This will be a 3 month interim role to help out during the busy year end period.

External reporting is a specialist team in Group Finance which is responsible for the preparation of the annual report and quarterly results releases. The team leads in providing technical accounting advice for the group, responds to developments in accounting standards and relevant regulation, updates group accounting policies and communicates these across the group as required.
In addition to the above, the team is also responsible for managing the share based payment transactions in coordination with shareholder services.

The finance analyst works with other members of the External Reporting Team to:
· Deliver the Quarterly Financial Results Release and Annual Report and Accounts
· Advise on appropriate technical accounting impacts of certain transactions
· Update the Group Accounting Policies Manual, prepare training or newsletters to communicate accounting developments across the business

In particular, the finance analyst is also responsible for:
· Calculation of certain inputs to the budget and actual results from specialist services (share based payments);
· Managing the non-audit fee process for reporting to the Audit Committee on a quarterly basis; and
· Managing the corporate ledger in conjunction with the group consolidation team;
· Assisting in the management of the group Annual Report and acting as the key point of contact for the Annual Report preparation.

Monthly and forecasting responsibilities

· Preparation and entry of journals for the Corporate Ledger and completion of trial balance and upload of results. Monthly/quarterly and annual analysis of results and dealing with adhoc queries.
· Forecasting and providing forecast vs actuals analysis across group and corporate ledger.
· Update of the associates and Joint ventures model, and submission of consolidation journals into the group accounting system.
· Management of coordination of IAD and external audit’s controls and transactional testing of the Corporate Ledger.

Quarterly responsibilities

· Assist in the preparation of the quarterly financial results release by acting as external reporting’s point of contact for two of our “lines of business”, understanding their performance and ensuring that it is fairly reflected in the press release, working closely with investor relations.
· Assisting with coordination of Quarterly Financial Results Release process from pre quarter planning through to completion and sign off.
· Preparation of the quarterly non-audit fee reporting to the Board Audit and Risk Committee.
· Collation of one-off items each quarter and preparation of the Quality of Earnings report to the Board.
· Update of the IFRS2 model for share-based payments, including forecasts, actuals, ad hoc analysis and deferred tax calculations.
· Providing reports and analysis to assist with the strategy for own share buybacks.
· Preparation and control of the financial Information Pack for the Group Finance Director and Investor Relations team and other ad hoc quarterly analysis as requested by management, liaising and working with a large number of contributors and stakeholders, including the line of business finance teams, Investor Relations, Shareholder Services and the external and internal auditors.

Annual responsibilities

· Assistance with preparation of the group Annual Report & Accounts, including note ownership, roll forward of the document, co-ordination and document control.
· Preparation and dissemination of timetables and instructions for annual reporting. This involves liaising and working with Shareholder Services, Group Legal and the external auditors.
· Project management of the Annual Report and Accounts.

Ad-hoc responsibilities

· Maintaining the External reporting sharepoint sites (for both external and limited user groups) and champion for the team’s compliance with document retention policies.
· Assistance with other issues within external reporting, including updating Group Accounting Policies
· Manual, providing training or communications on accounting developments, and assistance on technical queries and transactions as they arise.