Japan & Korea Finance Lead

The B&W Japan & Carver Korea Head of Finance is a critical leadership role partnering the business to deliver profitable growth, disciplined performance management, and long-term value creation across two strategically important Beauty & Wellbeing markets. The role will help sharpen business choices, enable stronger resource allocation, and build finance capability to support both in-year delivery and transformation across Japan and Carver Korea.

The role will be a part of Japan and Carver Korea leadership teams and is part of the broader Finance leadership community. It requires frequent engagement with market, regional, global finance, and cross-functional stakeholders on performance, strategy, governance, and investment choices.
For Japan this role will include scope of handling National Japan agendas on top of B&W.

Scope of the role
• Own end-to-end financial performance management across Japan and Carver Korea, from turnover to operating profit, cash, capex, and working capital outcomes.
• Partner the CEO and business leadership teams to shape short-term delivery and long-term strategy, ensuring clear financial choices, robust trade-offs, and disciplined investment governance.
• Lead and connect the market finance teams and finance excellence partners, including controllers, finance excellence, supply chain finance, customer development finance, and performance management teams.
• Drive strong S&OP / IBP discipline, forecast quality, and performance insight, ensuring risks and opportunities are surfaced early and acted on with speed.
• Act as a senior finance voice in transformation, productivity, restructuring, and capability-building initiatives across Japan and Carver Korea.

Accountabilities
1. Delivery of in-year financial performance vs targets
• Partner with market leadership and business teams to deliver financial targets through strong performance management, dynamic resource allocation, and clear trade-offs across markets, brands, channels, and functions.
• Provide independent financial challenge and decision support on investment choices, pricing, portfolio, innovation, customer plans, and growth initiatives.
• Own management of business-specific overheads and discretionary spend, including joint governance with HR on organisational choices and cost discipline.
• Support delivery of geography cash targets through UOP, capex, inventory, and working capital delivery.

2. Business partnering and growth agenda
• Partner Commercial, Marketing, Customer Business Development, Customer Strategy & Planning, Supply Chain, R&D, HR, and Legal teams to translate strategy into financially robust execution plans.
• Support in-market initiatives, including innovation, renovation, campaigns, channel choices, and customer investment decisions, ensuring growth plans are commercially sound and financially disciplined.
• Bring clear insight on market performance, consumer and channel economics, category mix, and operational levers to improve quality of business decisions.
• Enable Japan and Korea to balance short-term growth delivery with longer-term brand, channel, and capability investment.

3. Financial forecast quality and performance management
• Lead robust monthly forecasting and performance review processes, ensuring accuracy, appropriate challenge, and reduced forecast bias.
• Ensure S&OP / IBP processes are financially grounded and connected to demand, supply, customer, and innovation plans.
• Provide clear and actionable insight on monthly results, forecast movements, risks, and opportunities to market, regional, and global stakeholders.
• Work with local finance excellence teams to ensure timely and accurate cash-up, reporting, and performance management routines.

4. Long-term strategy and transformation
• Develop the financial framework for the long-term ambition of Japan and Korea, aligned with regional and global strategic priorities.
• Identify and shape initiatives that support profitable growth, productivity, simplification, and organisational effectiveness.
• Provide financial leadership for major transformation, capex, restructuring, and portfolio / acquisition or divestment opportunities where relevant.
• Help build a future-fit finance agenda that improves speed, quality of decision-making, and accountability across both markets.

5. Stewardship, controls, and risk management
• Lead business risk identification and ensure appropriate action plans are owned and executed by the relevant business teams.
• Ensure strong financial governance, controls, and compliance with local and regulatory requirements in Japan and Korea.
• Act as a guardian of value creation and responsible business practices, ensuring decisions are financially sound and appropriately governed.
• Work closely with country teams, controllers, legal, tax, and external partners where needed to protect the business and maintain high standards of stewardship.

6. Talent and team leadership
• Lead, coach, and develop direct and indirect finance talent across Japan and Korea, building a high-performing and inclusive finance community.
• Ensure roles in the business finance organisation provide meaningful development and clear accountability for incumbents.
• Work with regional and global finance leadership teams to create career opportunities and succession pathways for finance talent.
• Role-model enterprise leadership, collaboration, and agility across a cross-market and cross-cultural environment.
Critical Interfaces (external & internal)
• Japan and Carver Korea Leadership Teams, including Commercial lead, GM, Marketing, CBD, CSP, Supply Chain, R&D, HR, Legal, Factory etc.
• Greater Asia Beauty & Wellbeing leadership and business performance teams.
• Global Finance leadership, performance management, finance excellence, controls, tax, treasury, and audit teams.
• Country finance teams, brand finance, supply chain finance, customer development finance, accounting, and finance excellence teams.
• External partners where relevant, including auditors, advisors, and statutory / regulatory stakeholders.

Key Experiences
• Senior finance leadership experience, ideally as Head of Finance, Finance Director, Commercial Finance Lead, or equivalent in a multinational or complex matrix organisation.
• Strong business partnering experience across multiple functions, including Commercial, Marketing, Customer Development, Supply Chain, and General Management.
• Proven track record in P&L ownership, planning, forecasting, performance management, and investment governance.
• Experience leading finance across more than one market, or demonstrated ability to manage cross-cultural and cross-market complexity.
• Exposure to Japan and / or Korea market dynamics, ideally in Beauty, Personal Care, FMCG, Consumer Health, Retail, or adjacent consumer industries.
• High-impact communication and stakeholder engagement skills, including the ability to influence senior leaders with clear financial insight and commercial judgment.
• Experience leading or supporting business transformation, productivity, restructuring, operating model change, or turnaround agendas.
• Strong controls and stewardship mindset, with the ability to balance growth ambition with governance, risk management, and compliance expectations.
• People leadership capability, with a strong record of developing talent, building teams, and creating clarity in a complex matrix environment.
Leadership Profile
• Strategic and commercially sharp: able to connect financial insight with business choices and growth outcomes.
• Hands-on and execution-focused: comfortable moving between strategic trade-offs and operational details.
• Strong challenger and trusted partner: able to influence without authority and raise the quality of decision-making.
• Enterprise-minded: prioritises total business value, not functional optimisation alone.
• Inclusive, collaborative, and resilient: able to lead through ambiguity and build confidence across Japan and Carver Korea.

Diversity & Inclusion
Unilever embraces diversity and encourages applications from all walks of life. We are committed to providing a fair, inclusive, and barrier-free recruitment experience and to supporting reasonable adjustments where required.

Unilever is an organisation committed to equity, inclusion and diversity to drive our business results and create a better future, every day, for our diverse employees, global consumers, partners, and communities. We believe a diverse workforce allows us to match our growth ambitions and drive inclusion across the business. At Unilever we are interested in every individual bringing their ‘Whole Self’ to work and this includes you! Thus if you require any support or access requirements, we encourage you to advise us at the time of your application so that we can support you through your recruitment journey.

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