Why we will love you

At IKEA, you're welcome no matter where you come from, what you believe, and what you look like. We don't even care how you have furnished your home. We're interested in you simply because you're you. Our different views, backgrounds, and personalities make us better understand our customers, give us more fun at work and spark more and better ideas.

As a person you are a dedicated team player with a positive attitude, motivated to improve yourself and others. You are a fast and pro-active learner who interacts in an inspiring, supportive and challenging way in line with the Ingka values.

You are a finance professional who gets energized by working close to the business. You have a deep understanding of financials, whilst taking a multi-dimensional view. You will lead the Financial Controlling areas within the portfolio area with a focus on Real Estate Investments. You connect the needs of the Portfolio Area management and operations with a complete overview of the profit & loss, the balance sheet, and cash flow management, creating invaluable insights. You support strong accounting and reporting frameworks and contribute to solution development that create required insights and promote effective and efficient processes.

To succeed in this role, we believe you are excellent in relationship building, business partnering and stakeholder management. You have sharp analytical skills and can easily translate business needs into finance requirements and vice-versa. You communicate in a clear and inspiring way. You get energy of working in an ever-changing and complex work environment, where many things are in the unknown. You can prioritize and deliver result with quality and on time.

Furthermore, we believe you have:
• University degree in Accounting, Finance, Economics or related area.
• 8+ years work experience with increased responsibility in accounting or finance related field.
• Sharp analytical skills and a deep understanding of financials.
• Extensive knowledge of accounting and financial reporting rules and frameworks, standards and manuals, General Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and consolidation.
• Experience in the area of commercial real estate
• Experience of working in larger international companies.
• Good understanding of new technologies and solutions and ability to design reporting frameworks fit for business needs.
It is a benefit if you have good knowledge of IKEA's global business direction, IKEA Concept, and its market.

Of course, you share and live our IKEA culture and values.

Your responsibilities

We have a new role as Financial Control & Development Leader, where you get the opportunity to be part of a broad function in this fast growing and dynamic organization. You will get the opportunity to further develop this role together with us and be part of building a fit for future finance organization.
We will be a new central team consisting of one Business Navigation Leader, and one Financial Control & Development Leader reporting to Finance Manager, Lydia de Koning-Roelofsen. The team has multiple matrix connections to both the Ingka Investment central finance function and the local finance functions within the countries, together covering the full finance scope.

More specifically, your responsibilities are as follows:
• Responsible for the budget, forecast and actual reporting follow-up within the portfolio area, with a focus on Real Estate Investments.
• Develop and prepare management reporting of the portfolio area, including analytical reviews and first level of commenting.
• Lead the Matrix community of the financial control team within the portfolio area and align with (external) service partners to achieve global standard frameworks and processes and efficiently deliver the right level of quality of accounting and management reporting for business and compliance needs, based on standard global frameworks and local legal requirements.
• Responsible for setting up and maintaining the financial framework within the portfolio area to follow-up cost and performance and support decision making in line with global frameworks.
• Actively contribute and provide inputs to the development and implementation of (new) finance and accounting solutions
• Enable business navigation by creating insight in costs, performance and liquidity position for Ingka Investments and enable an effective and efficient recharging process, and support investment decisions.
• Coordinate the setup of the finance function in newly acquired or newly setup companies and countries.
• Responsible for building and maintaining strong business relationships with relevant stakeholders and act as a trustful and professional business partner at all levels of the organization to support reaching overall goals and objectives.
• Lead cooperation with Ingka Investments CFO team and Country organizations to review quality issues and organize remediation to minimize deviations from standard global frameworks for local business needs and compliance reasons and secure effective ways of working
• Develop, implement, and continuously improve effective and efficient Accounting & Reporting processes and routines.
• Participate in global projects and support local execution (as part of these projects) to simplify, harmonize and automate financial operations and reporting.
• Provide transaction (M&A) support in the field of financial analysis and connecting to relevant group functions (such as Group Tax, Group Legal and Group Treasury).

This role is based in Amsterdam, with possibility/need to work from Leiden from time to time.

About this work area

Ingka Investments is the Investment vehicle of "Ingka Group' (biggest franchisee of Ikea). Ingka Investments' mission is to lead with purposeful investments, enabling Ingka Group's long-term growth and financial strength and to help achieving its People & Planet Positive strategy. We want to position Ingka Group as a unique, responsible and trusted investor.

Ingka Investments has seven portfolios in total. Our team takes finance responsibility for three of them:
• Within the Real Estate portfolio we focus on investing in core inner city real estate and as well as large distribution and logistics parks in major cities important to IKEA Retail. We currently have a portfolio of assets across five countries (in Europe and Northern America) and have an active expansion strategy.
• Within the Renewable Energy portfolio we invest to support the transition towards a renewable energy future, a reduction of the IKEA climate footprint and a broader transition to a net-zero society. By the end of FY23, we owned and operated over 500 wind turbines in 14 countries and solar parks across 3 countries. Furthermore, we had windfarms, solar farms and battery storage projects under construction across 5 countries, and 11 projects across 6 countries in preparation for construction. We are also invested in offshore development projects in 3 countries. 
• Within the forestland portfolio we invest in forestland for the long term to ensure this vital resource is managed responsibly, so that forests remain forests forever. Responsible wood sourcing is crucial for a healthier planet, a more sustainable future and more balanced ecosystems for generations to come. By the end of FY23 we owned more than 280,000 hectares of forests in six countries.

The three portfolio's employ a total of over 200 fte, with responsibilities ranging from operational to strategy and from day-to-day to M&A activities. Current investments and commitments within these portfolios total to circa 6 billion Euro with a purpose-led ambition to grow to over 10 billion Euro by 2030.

Questions and support? Let's connect!

For questions about the recruitment process, please contact Sofie Skarlöv at sofie.skarlov2@ingka.ikea.com. For questions about the position, please contact Lydia at lydia.de.koning-roelofsen1@ingka.com.

We look forward to receiving your application as soon as possible as we will review applications continuously, final day to apply is 7th of January 2025. Due to GDPR we do not accept applications sent in via email and please note that for the final candidate a pre-employment check will be part of the recruitment process. We kindly like to ask you to expect some delays in response to your application, due to the Christmas and New Year Holidays.

Warm welcome with your application!