Finance Director
Role Purpose
The role is a cornerstone appointment within a highly successful multi-generation, family-owned Luxembourg business undergoing a deliberate generational transition.
The Director Finance & Controlling will act as the senior financial authority for the business, combining deep technical finance and controlling expertise with commercial judgement, systems leadership, and governance maturity. The mandate will be transformational, visible and rewarding.
This position requires Director-level presence and judgement from day one, with the ability to build financial structure from a limited baseline while providing long-term stewardship in family-owned business environment.
Business & Strategic Context
Our client is a long-established trading and distribution business with diversified commercial activity across wholesale and logistics. Historically directed through a highly centralised CEO-led model, the company is now further imbedding formal governance, financial strategy, and forward-looking business steering as part of its generational transition.
The Director Finance & Controlling will embed financial governance and transparency and support the incoming CEO as a trusted counterweight.
Core Responsibilities
Financial Leadership & Governance
Pricing, Margin & Commercial Analytics
Experience
Role Purpose
The role is a cornerstone appointment within a highly successful multi-generation, family-owned Luxembourg business undergoing a deliberate generational transition.
The Director Finance & Controlling will act as the senior financial authority for the business, combining deep technical finance and controlling expertise with commercial judgement, systems leadership, and governance maturity. The mandate will be transformational, visible and rewarding.
This position requires Director-level presence and judgement from day one, with the ability to build financial structure from a limited baseline while providing long-term stewardship in family-owned business environment.
Business & Strategic Context
Our client is a long-established trading and distribution business with diversified commercial activity across wholesale and logistics. Historically directed through a highly centralised CEO-led model, the company is now further imbedding formal governance, financial strategy, and forward-looking business steering as part of its generational transition.
The Director Finance & Controlling will embed financial governance and transparency and support the incoming CEO as a trusted counterweight.
Core Responsibilities
Financial Leadership & Governance
- Act as senior financial authority for the business.
- Establish robust financial governance, internal controls, and management reporting
- Introduce budgeting discipline, cost control, and margin transparency
- Prepare clear, decision-ready financial materials for Board and ownership discussions
- Support long-term stewardship, and investment decisions
- Build and embed a complete controlling framework from a limited baseline
- Develop KPI architecture, dashboards, forecasting, budgeting, and scenario planning
- Deliver contribution margin analysis by product, category, customer, channel, and event etc
- Lead variance analysis and translate insights into concrete operational actions
- Oversee and/or prepare monthly, quarterly, and annual financial statements
- Manage liquidity, cash flow, working capital, and payment flows
- Ensure compliance across accounting standards, tax, customs, excise duties, and audits
- Strengthen financial discipline without over-bureaucratising the organisation
Pricing, Margin & Commercial Analytics
- Design and implement pricing and margin architectures across all business models
- Establish discount logic, customer conditions, and profitability monitoring
- Track margin drivers including purchasing costs, logistics, transport, processing, and inventory
- Support management in balancing growth, profitability, and operational complexity
- Analyse supplier pricing, terms, bonuses, and procurement economics
- Support negotiations with data-driven decision tools
- Monitor inventory value, turnover, coverage, and capital intensity
- Evaluate logistics efficiency, warehouse performance, fleet economics, and routing
- Mitigate risks related to seasonality, vintages, imports, and supply continuity
- Provide financial leadership to the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central implementation
- Define finance-led system requirements, data structures, and reporting logic
- Ensure ERP and BI solutions support forward-looking control, not just retrospective accounting
- In cooperation with external advisiors develop a BI environment (Power BI preferred) and automate reporting processes
- Safeguard master data quality and cross-functional system integration
- Lead and develop a small transactional finance team
- Build a culture of transparency, accountability, and process discipline
- Act as a stabilising presence during organisational change
- Influence through credibility, judgement, and trust rather than hierarchy
- Partner closely with CEO, and functional leaders
Experience
- C. 10-15+ years of professional experience with senior finance leadership exposure
- Background in trading, distribution, industrial, FMCG or operationally complex environments
- Strong understanding of business processes and digital tools (ERP, BI).
- Digitalisation: Implement and optimize ERP and BI systems, automate processes.
- Prior sector experience less important than maturity, judgement, and credibility
- Fluent German and French mandatory
- Professional English required
- Strong comprehension of Luxembourgish highly preferred
Greenfield is a specialist talent advisory firm supporting leadership teams across Luxembourg’s financial, professional services, and corporate ecosystem, addressing complex hiring challenges through judgement, execution, and long-term partnership.
- Pagosa Building, Bloc C
153-155, rue du Kiem
L-8030 Strassen, Luxembourg
