Finance Business Partner Senior Manager - Greater China

Role Overview

As Finance Business Partner Manager for GC, you will play a critical role in shaping long‑term, sustainable cash growth and market share expansion across a diverse and strategically important set of markets. Serving as the principal financial co‑pilot to market leadership teams, you will deliver insights, challenge thinking, and influence decisions to unlock value creation.

Further, given the scoping of GC (one of the largest country clusters globally), with responsibilities across GC, this role requires navigating significant business complexity—multiple brands, varied market archetypes, hybrid route‑to‑market models, and broad stakeholder groups—while operating in a dynamic, results‑driven environment. You will work closely with senior leaders across the region.

Key Pillars of the Role

• Financial Leadership and Co-piloting: Act as the key financial business partner across the respective leadership teams to help design, develop and deploy the business strategy, applying a sharp financial lens to maximize sustainable cash growth.
• Value creation and Growth: Actively partner the commercial and marketing teams on generating profitable long-term growth, whilst proactively working with the GMs and regional CFO to proactively identify value creation opportunities.
• Performance Planning and Management: Own the financial performance planning and management cadence and associated tools/resources and deliver key insights and actions to help the teams achieve our goals.  
• Business Case Development: Work cross‑functionally to design and evaluate innovation and strategic business cases, enhancing capability across teams.

Key Responsibilities

Commercial Finance Partnering

• Serve as financial co‑pilot to the GC leadership teams (General Manager(s), Commercial, and Marketing Directors).
• Lead the commercial finance performance agenda with forward‑looking insight and transparent communication.
• Drive daily, monthly, and annual sales performance management, ensuring accurate landing and timely interventions.
• Design and embed performance cadences and reporting frameworks.
• Oversee Joint Business Plan (JBP) tracking and customer/brand‑level target setting.
• Strengthen KPI understanding (e.g., market share, distribution, frequency) to support strategic steering.

Price, Margin and Profitability Management

• Lead analysis and intervention on price/mix/margin performance.
• Communicate standard transfer pricing movements to commercial and marketing teams.
• Build pricing and margin models to support growth and profitability (NRM/RGM).
• Provide financial approval for promotional investments and evaluate results for continuous improvement.

Planning, Forecasting and S&OP Leadership

• Coordinate and elevate the S&OP process, ensuring alignment with European standards.
• S&OP coordination throughout and ownership from receipt of cash up to submission (content and meetings, including GM sign off)
• Ensure forecast accuracy, completeness, and clarity, while steering risk & opportunity discussions.
• Lead Monthly Business Review (MBR) design and delivery to the GC Leadership Team.
• Explore opportunities for process centralisation to improve efficiency.

Business Case and Investment Support

• Partner with Marketing to develop innovation business cases aligned to key gatekeeping timelines.
• Provide proactive financial guidance to CFO, GM, and CMO.
• Build self‑service tools to strengthen financial capability within marketing teams.

Other

• Trade rebate review ownership, ensuring completeness and accuracy and intervention as needed
• BMI cost control, ensuring completeness and accuracy and intervention as needed
• Short and long term cash flow planning for respective areas owned by business partners (i.e. invoicing and rebates)

Key Stakeholders

• Market leaderships teams (Finance, General, Marketing, Commercial and Supply Chain)
• ‘-1’ Functional teams as needed (e.g. key account managers, brand managers)
• Regional and global finance teams
• Lipton Leadership Team (LLT) and as needed
• External financial, legal, and regulatory bodies, including auditors, as needed.

What We’re Looking For

• Proven financial leadership experience, ideally across diverse markets and business models.
• Strong track record of value creation and strategic financial partnering.
• High integrity, transparency, ownership, and accountability.
• Exceptional analytical capability paired with strategic thinking and attention to detail.
• Resilience, agility, and a proactive, action‑oriented mindset.
• Minimum 7 years' managerial finance experience; FMCG preferred.