Join the staff—Managing Director

Location: Regular attendance at the London office and travel to other global offices and locations
Duration: Permanent

About the role

Reports to: Chair of the Trustees
Manages: Operational Leadership Team, working with the Executive Operations Director
Works closely with: Chair and Vice-Chairs of the IASB and ISSB
Liaises with: Trustees; IASB and ISSB Board members; staff at all levels
Engages with: Monitoring Board Chair and secretariat; IOSCO Chair, Secretary General and secretariat; Financial Stability Board Secretary General and secretariat; jurisdictional regulators and standard-setters

Background

With a staff of around 330 and an annual budget of £70 million, the IFRS Foundation is the independent, not-for-profit body established to develop—in the public interest—high-quality, understandable, enforceable and globally accepted standards for general purpose financial reporting and to promote and facilitate their adoption The standards—IFRS® Accounting Standards and IFRS® Sustainability Disclosure Standards—are set by the Foundation’s standard-setting Boards, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) respectively. IFRS Accounting Standards are required in more than 140 jurisdictions.

The two Boards are overseen by the IFRS Foundation Trustees, who in turn inform a Monitoring Board of public authorities. The Constitution of the Foundation defines the responsibilities of the 22 Trustees as including:

• appointing the Managing Director, in consultation with the Chairs of the IASB and the ISSB, and establish his or her contract of service and performance criteria;
• responsibility for establishing and maintaining appropriate financing arrangements and approve annually the budget of the IFRS Foundation and determine the base for funding.

These key responsibilities of the Trustees are greater now than when the Foundation was first established: the Foundation now includes two Boards (at different phases of development) with their separate funding and expenditure requirements. This must be taken into account when the Trustees decide how the Trustees and the staff are organised. Advice and delivery on these financial and operational issues is a core role for the executive head of the Foundation.

Job purpose

To lead the Foundation’s strategic planning, governance, funding and expenditure activities and day-to-day operations, as well as supporting the work of the Trustees and both Boards. (The Chairs of the IASB and the ISSB have complete responsibility for all technical matters related to their respective remits).

Principal Accountabilities

The Managing Director works in close cooperation with the Executive Operations Director (who acts as deputy to the MD) delegating aspects of the following responsibilities as appropriate:

Governance:

• Ensure corporate governance and local compliance, along with internal controls and processes, appropriate to the Foundation’s structure at its various locations, are in place and functioning effectively. Such controls to be periodically reviewed, linked to appropriate horizon-scanning, so that risks and opportunities are continuously identified and mitigated appropriately.
• Support the work and agenda of the Trustees, including regular committee meetings and Trustee in-person meetings three times a year, and serve as the key staff member in their engagement with the Foundation’s Monitoring Board.
• Assess, manage and mitigate enterprise risk.

Fundraising and budgeting:  

• Ensure the maintenance and further development of an effective global funding strategy and framework for the organisation working with the Trustees, including appropriate business development activities.
• Ensure delivery of the strategy through the collection of earned income and promised contributions by stakeholders across the world to enable medium-to-long term diversified funding; ensure policies and controls are in place to determine contributions are only accepted from reputable sources to protect the integrity and credibility of the Foundation and its independent standard-setting Boards.
• Ensure the delivery of commitments made in the various public and private sector MOUs to enable continued collection of ISSB funding during the initial seed-funding period.

Operational leadership: 

• Lead the appropriate operational prioritisation of issues, investment, and allocation of staff and other resources, in line with the strategic workplan to balance the ambitions of the Foundation with its ability to deliver in a way which is sustainable for its staff as well as the environment.
• Lead and develop a senior executive team who are responsible for an Operations team of around 160 through local offices across multiple jurisdictions, and oversee the global operations, communications, and governance responsibilities within the Foundation. The responsibilities of this executive team include, among others, leading the following shared services functions to support the IFRS Foundation and the Boards: public affairs, corporate secretariat, governance, finance, fundraising, business development, capacity building, legal, commercial, compliance, human resources, publishing, internal sustainability, and technology; (The Chairs of the IASB and the ISSB are responsible for establishing the senior technical team of their respective Boards, in consultation with the Trustees, and are responsible for supervising their respective teams and their staffs).

Stakeholder engagement:

• Ensure appropriate and positive relationships with the Foundation’s global stakeholders (including public, private, and international bodies) at a policy level and share responsibility for maintaining some of them on issues related to governance and the adoption of IFRS Standards.
• To serve as a principal spokesperson of the IFRS Foundation via public speeches and engagements, key confidential meetings (IOSCO, G7 etc) and media.

Strategy:

• Working directly with the Chair and other Trustees, the Chairs and Vice-Chairs of the Boards, as well as senior staff, develop a strategy and strategic workplan to achieve the Foundation’s mission, and ensuring its delivery.
• Work closely with the Chairs of the Boards to ensure that they are properly resourced and supported (within the Trustees set parameters including budgets), but the setting and delivery of the technical agenda of the Boards is the responsibility of the Boards themselves.

People

• Along with the Board Chairs and Vice-Chairs and senior staff, take a lead in modelling the values, culture and behaviour of the organisation to enable positive engagement and well-being of all staff.
• Lead an organisation that attracts, motivates and encourages diverse talented team members to achieve excellence. Instill a culture of collaboration, inclusion, performance and accountability.

Skills and attributes:

• Significant senior managerial experience in a multicultural and international setting with preference given where this includes experience in a regulator or public interest organisation.
• Solid experience in guiding and developing policy at senior level in a complex environment.
• A strong understanding of capital markets, the regulation of capital markets, and the role that corporate reporting plays in their functioning.
• An understanding of the financial and sustainability reporting policy-making environment.
• Credibility and diplomacy skills to deal with many regulatory and governmental agencies around the world, as well as international organisations.
• Strong relationship building skills and an inclusive and collaborative management style.
• Demonstrated ability to handle complex issues in a diplomatic manner and to achieve results in a timely fashion.
• Strong written and oral communication skills.

Nomination process

The Trustees will consult with the Chairs of the IASB and the ISSB and engage an executive search firm to support a global search for candidates to enable the nomination process and appointment of the Managing Director of the IFRS Foundation.

To apply

Please send a detailed CV/résumé to IFRSMD@egonzehnder.com. Please include the following information or your application may not be considered:

• the job title/position you are interested in and the location of the job (in the subject line of your email); and
• covering email/letter detailing how you meet the specified role requirements.

Closing date: Ongoing