Finance business partner

Help turn financial insights into publishing decisions, working with Headline’s teams to understand title performance and identify opportunities for growth.

Hachette UK is a creative powerhouse and the UK's second largest book publishing group. Our mission is to make it easy for everyone to discover new worlds of ideas, learning, entertainment and opportunity. We're made up of 10 autonomous publishing divisions and over 60 imprints with a rich and diverse history and an incredible range of authors. We're also the market leader in e-books and publish a range of bestsellers in audio format, the fastest growing part of our business.

Headline is a division of Hachette UK, and home to the very best of commercial publishing. Headline's authors offer something for every taste and therefore range from the Women’s Prize-winning superstar novelist Maggie O’Farrell and household name Victoria Hislop to TikTok Romantasy favourite Amber V Nicole and Traitors star Harriet Tyce; while the non-fiction roster includes brilliant memoirs from Hollywood legends, Matthew McConaughey, Michael J Fox and Michael Douglas alongside former Prime Minister Theresa May and BBC journalist Ros Atkins. Meanwhile Headline's colour list features globally bestselling fashion series and official sports brands, including Formula One, FIFA and UEFA.

Hachette UK is part of Hachette Livre, the world's third largest trade and educational publisher. As well as our headquarters in Carmelite House, London, and our state-of-the-art book distribution centre in Didcot, Oxfordshire, we have recently opened five new offices in Manchester, Bristol, Sheffield, Newcastle, and Edinburgh. The UK region also includes offices in Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore, the Caribbean, and Ireland.

It's an exciting time to join our business because the publishing market continues to grow and thrive. The UK remains the largest exporter of physical books in the world and book adaptations for film and TV are the foundation of the UK's creative industries.

What you'll be doing

Reporting to the Headline Finance Director, this role is the financial, operational and strategic business partner for Headline's departments and management team, ensuring the financial impact of business decisions are properly assessed, monitored, and reviewed. You will analyse performance against budget and evaluate future projects and acquisitions. Working closely with publishing colleagues, you will build their financial understanding, embed effective finance processes, and help shape strategy for growth and profitability.

A key focus for the role is delivering financial information to non-financial colleagues in the division, in particular leading the reviews of title/genre/category performance, identifying learnings to improve future new title acquisition decision-making.

The role is also responsible for producing monthly management packs for senior Headline leadership team as well as ad hoc reporting as required by the division. The role works closely with the Management Accounts team to ensure month-end reporting, balance sheet reconciliations and other standard reports produced by that team for Headline are accurate and timely.

Who we are looking for

A qualified accountant with proven experience in a business-facing/commercial role and the demonstrable ability to communicate financial information to non financial colleagues. The successful candidate will be well organised, able to plan their own workload to consistently meet deadlines and to form strong working relationships with colleagues across a range of functions/departments. Attention to detail and strong excel skills are a must and previous experience of SAP and/or the publishing industry would be desirable. You will comfortable presenting information in person, in an accessible way, to larger groups of colleagues from time to time.

What we offer

Our staff are our greatest asset, and our benefits reflect this:

• 28 annual leave days per year, increases to 29 days after 2 years' service and goes up to 30 days after 5 years' (+ bank holidays)
• Private medical insurance
• Dental insurance
• Generous pension schemes
• Rent deposit loans
• 2 community days per year
• Summer hours (finishing at 1pm on Fridays during the summer months)
• Retail discounts through Hachette rewards
• Cycle to Work scheme
• Eye care vouchers
• Wide-ranging training library
• Development programmes (including mentoring)
• Up to 70% off book purchases
• A charity bookshelf
• An active range of staff-led employee networks that are voluntary, including AgeWise, Gender Balance, Thrive, Pride, All Together, Wellbeing, Women in Techand religious networks
• Season ticket loans
• And much more!

The role will be based at our London office, with a blend of in-office (3 days) and homeworking (2 days) per week.

Our commitment

Hachette employs people on the basis of their abilities. We aim to attract and develop talent from a base as broad as the world of readers we want to reach, with a wide and representative range of age, faith, disability, race, gender, sexuality and socio-economic, regional and cultural backgrounds.

We want everyone to have the opportunity to perform at their best during our recruitment process. If you need any adjustments, you can let us know at the ‘Reasonable Adjustments’ section of your application. We’ll make sure you’re supported throughout the process.

The Book Trade Charity offers financial support to people looking to enter the book trade but who may struggle to afford the costs of attending interviews and undertaking junior roles. For more information visit https://btbs.org/grants

We welcome and encourage applications from candidates who are under-represented in the creative industries.

Please make sure that you state in your application that you found this role via Creative Access.