Chief Financial Officer – LATAM

THE COMPANY

Our client is a premier global leader in industrial explosives and engineered blasting solutions, with a rich history of safety and innovation spanning nearly two centuries. As one of the oldest and most resilient manufacturing enterprises in the United States, they provide comprehensive, end-to-end rock fragmentation services that power the world’s most critical infrastructure. Operating in over 27 countries with a dedicated workforce of approximately 4,800 employees, they manufacture high-performance commercial explosives, state-of-the-art electronic initiation systems, and predictive blast-modeling software.

THE POSITION

The Business Unit CFO for LATAM is a core member of the leadership team and the principal strategic and financial partner to the President of Latam, in addition to a trusted partner of the corporate finance team. The role holds full accountability for EBITDA, cash flow, capital efficiency, financial governance, and profitable growth. The CFO translates strategy into disciplined operating plans, forecasts, and capital allocation decisions that deliver measurable business outcomes while ensuring strong enterprise finance team alignment and rigor. This function will also have close alignment with IT, as future IT direct reporting is still being defined.
The CFO will preferably be based in Torreon, Mexico or other locations in Mexico (like Monterrey, Guadalajara, Mexico City, etc.), Panama City, Panama, or Santiago, Chile.  

Strategic Business Leadership & Partnership
Act as a trusted advisor and business leader to the President of LATAM and LATAM leadership team. Shape and challenge business strategy, align financial outcomes with operational and commercial priorities, and convert strategy into executable financial plans. Build strong, proactive partnerships with global finance teams to ensure alignment on governance, planning, systems, and reporting standards. Leverage technology, automation, and best practices to deliver timely insights while optimizing cost to serve. This candidate would be a leader that educates the LATAM team on understanding their financial performance, product / customer profitability (variable / fixed), functional cost and performance to PY, budget, forecast and benchmarking.

Business Planning, Forecasting & Performance Management
Own the Business Unit operating plan, budget, and rolling forecast financial process, ensuring alignment with enterprise strategy and market realities. Lead scenario planning, costing, and customer / product profitability analysis. Establish a rigorous performance management cadence with clear KPIs that link strategy to execution, driving accountability for commitments and results. Be a key participant in the SIOP process.

EBITDA, Cash & Profitability Ownership
Maintain full ownership of the P&L and Balance Sheet, with focus on gross margin, EBITDA growth, working capital efficiency, cash generation, pricing strategy, and ROIC. Deliver actionable profitability insights across products, customers, and channels. Oversee regional accounting / share services to ensure compliance with corporate and statutory standards while continuously optimizing cost structure. There will be key actions needed in cost and working capital improvements. Educate the region on financial performance and associate drivers; where is the team winning and where are the opportunities to improve.

Capital Planning & Investment Governance
Lead capital planning and governance to ensure disciplined deployment of capital to the highest-value opportunities. Require robust business cases with defined strategic and financial returns / ROIC. Track performance against approved returns and conduct post-investment reviews to reinforce accountability and learning.

Enterprise Alignment, Governance & Risk Management
Ensure strict adherence to enterprise financial policies / functional direction, internal controls, reporting standards, and timelines. Partner closely with corporate controlling, treasury, tax, and planning teams. Maintain a strong control environment, lead financial risk management, and serve as the primary contact for internal and external audits, with continual alignment to enterprise standards.

Continuous Improvement, Technology & ERP Leadership
Champion continuous improvement and process excellence across finance and business operations. Drive digitalization and automation of finance processes. Leverage SAP expertise to ensure data integrity, standardized reporting, and high-quality management. information that enables timely, evidence-based decision-making. Bring curiosity to everything this position engages in and be a drive of positive change and embracing AI, ML and other fast-growing technologies. Partnering with the Enterprise BI team will be critical to align initiatives.

Talent Leadership & Development
Build and lead a high-performing finance organization with strong analytical and business partnering capabilities. Coach and develop talent, establish succession depth, and set clear expectations for quality, timeliness, and enterprise alignment. Foster open communication, accountability, and continuous improvement mindset. Identify high performers and prepare developmental plans to grow / retain this talent.

Expanded FP&A Expectations
Financial Planning & Analysis capabilities are central to success in this role. The Business Unit CFO is expected to demonstrate best-in-class FP&A leadership through the following outcomes:

• Establishment of a forward-looking regional FP&A function that integrates strategic planning, market views, budgeting, rolling forecasts, and scenario modeling into a single, coherent decision-support framework.
• Delivery of highly accurate, unbiased forecasts supported by clear assumptions, sensitivity analysis, and early identification of risks and opportunities.
• Development of robust driver-based models linking volume, pricing, mix, cost inflation, productivity, and capital deployment to EBITDA, cash flow, and ROIC outcomes.
• Translation of complex financial analysis into clear, actionable insights for senior leadership, enabling faster and better commercial and operational decisions.
• Leadership of quarterly and annual planning cycles that are efficient, disciplined, and value-adding, with strong ownership from functional and operational leaders.
• Proactive identification of performance gaps vs. plan, with clear root-cause analysis and corrective action plans tracked to delivery.
• Alignment of FP&A outputs with enterprise standards, systems, and data models, leveraging SAP (B1) and analytics tools to improve consistency, transparency, and decision quality.

Connect the Finance teams as One Across all of LATAM
This is another critical need. The team needs to work as an align function across LATAM and not focus on inefficiencies in silos and limited focus areas.

• Span of control needs to increase and there needs to be a strong and aligned focus with the corporate team on developing a center of excellence to align certain transactional, accounting and statutory activities as a shared service that would service LATAM and possibly other global business units. This will be an effort that is supported and jointly aligned with the corporate finance team

THE CANDIDATE

Experience & Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Finance or Accounting; CPA, ACCA, CIMA, or equivalent preferred.
• 10–15 years of progressive finance experience, including at least 5 years in a senior leadership role.
• Strong experience in process manufacturing or chemicals; industrial manufacturing; civil explosives experience preferred.
• Demonstrated success supporting capital-intensive, multi-site operations with disciplined investment and payback focus.
• Proven expertise in FP&A, financial modeling, technical accounting, and SAP-based ERP environments.
• Experience operating within a global organization headquartered in North America; regional consolidation experience strongly preferred.
• Comfortable in a growing and dynamic environment that will continue to evolve in how finance and IT work and connect within the business
• M&A experience and acquisition integration is also highly desirable

Success Profile – First 12–24 Months

The successful Business Unit CFO will demonstrate clear, measurable impact within the first 12–24 months by delivering the following outcomes:

• Trusted strategic partner to the President of Latam and Latam leadership team, actively shaping business strategy, challenging assumptions, and influencing key commercial and operational decisions.
• Develop a team that is driven by accountability and results orientation within themselves, their team and the organization. Driving an mindset of growth and continuous improvement
• Delivery of committed EBITDA margin, and cash flow targets through disciplined forecasting, rigorous performance management, working capital management and actionable profitability insights.
• Establishment of a robust planning and forecasting cadence with high forecast accuracy, clear KPIs, and strong accountability across the leadership team.
• Improved working capital efficiency and cash conversion through tighter balance sheet management, inventory optimization, and enhanced spending controls.
• Disciplined capital allocation, with clear investment governance, strong business cases, on-time delivery of major projects, and achievement of approved payback and ROIC targets.
• Strong enterprise alignment, with consistent adherence to corporate finance policies, reporting standards / requirements, internal controls, and audit requirements.
• Successful advancement of digital finance initiatives, including improved use of SAP, automation of transactional processes, and delivery of standardized, high-quality management reporting and embracing Global BI initiatives in Power BI, ML and AI
• Developing a high-performing finance organization with improved capability in business partnering, analytics, and decision support, supported by clear roles, development plans, and succession depth.
• A visible culture of integrity, accountability, and continuous improvement across finance and the broader business.
• Review, prepare and implement plans in Latam to optimize cost to service in the Finance and IT organization – standardize, streamline and optimize per enterprise processes and customer excellence initiatives.