Corporate Finance Director

VEON-HQ; Dubai; On-site; AED 440,000 - 588,000; Full time

Job summary

A global telecom company based in Dubai is seeking a Director of Corporate Finance to manage treasury functions ensuring sufficient liquidity and funding. The successful candidate will have over 10 years' experience in treasury or banking, strong negotiation and analytical skills, and expertise in financial modelling. This role involves securing new loans, developing funding strategies, and maintaining relationships with credit rating agencies, all while supporting business objectives and operations.

Qualifications

• More than 10 years of experience in international treasury or banking.
• Experience in drafting and negotiating loan and capital market documents.
• Ability to lead teams and drive change.

Responsibilities

• Manage liquidity and funding with loans and bond issuance.
• Support Group Treasury Director in creating Board presentations.
• Oversee relationships with credit rating agencies.

Skills

Bank relationship management

Financial modelling

Strong analytical skills

Negotiation skills

Communication skills

Education

Master in Finance / Economics or MBA

Job description

VEON is a Nasdaq-listed global digital operator that serves more than 150 million customers with connectivity and about 120 million monthly active users with digital services in some of the world’s most exciting frontier markets. Operating across 5 countries that are home to nearly 520 million people, in other words more than 6% of the world’s population, VEON transforms lives through technology-driven services that empower individuals and drive economic growth.

With VEON’s Digital Operator 1440 vision and strategy, VEON Group companies redefine the engagement that telecom operators have with their customers, providing the best digital experience to customers up to 1440 minutes in a day. We transform not only the daily experience of the final users, but also support the growth of enterprises and industries as a whole, using cutting-edge technologies in AI, big-data and cloud services to serve our business customers.

This is all underpinned by a commitment to sustainability, ensuring VEON’s operations are run safely and ethically while fostering digital entrepreneurship and greater digital skills and literacy in the communities in which VEON operates. VEON’s values-based approach works to strengthen trust by building a responsible and sustainable business that benefits customers, employees, communities, and shareholders.

VEON’s international leadership team is drawn from experienced executives from around the world and has been led by CEO Kaan Terzioğlu since July 2021.

Position Summary

VEON Group Treasury (HQ) is centralized in organization, coordination and operations and is supported by local OpCo Treasury teams at the country level performing local domestic treasury operations under Group Treasury Policies. The HQ treasury function is critical to manage sufficient liquidity, debt facilities, investments, and risk management strategies related to all financial activities supporting the achievement of VEON’s business objectives.

The Corporate Finance department is responsible for managing the current debt of USD 7.5bn, developing and securing a cost efficient capital structure for VEON from a Group, HQ and Operating Subsidiary perspective. Its activities include amongst others: identifying need for and negotiating new loan facilities at Group and OpCo level in multiple currencies, debt capital market issuances, liability management exercises, credit investor communications, bank relationship management, credit rating agencies management and technical support on M&A transactions and on intercompany restructurings.

Key Responsibilities

• The Director Corporate Finance plays an essential role in supporting VEON maintaining sufficient liquidity, among other things by securing new loans and issuance of bonds to refinance maturing debt and to obtain necessary new funding to allow VEON to invest in its operations or for M&A support.
• Support the Group Treasury Director in the creation of presentations for the Finance Committee of the Board, and the Audit Committee of the Board.
• Be instrumental in supporting both the Group Treasury Director and the Investor Relations team in the communications to the market when it comes to credit related matters, credit investors and credit rating agencies.
• Provide support in the forecasting process by identifying possible funding needs and together with the Group Treasury Director and in coordination with the Group CFO developing short terms, medium term and long term funding strategies both for HQ and Operating Subsidiary level financings to support capital structure objectives.
• Financial modelling as required to analyse impact of projected business performance on capital structure plans.

• Bank relationship management
• Day to day support of Group Treasury Director bank relationship management activities from a bank loan funding and credit perspective.
• Day to day support in discussions with Debt Capital Market teams of banking partners understanding new developments and key themes on the debt capital markets.
• Participation in discussions of hedging with banking partners.

• Funding
• Defining and implementing the Group’s funding strategy.
• Effectively managing bank and debt capital markets relationships.
• Ensure the Group’s access to different funding options including banking debt market and global capital markets by establishing various funding programs for opportunistic liquidity access (revolving credit facilities, bonds program, uncommitted credit lines, etc.).
• Evaluate alternative funding options including debt-equity convertible, equity exchangeable funding, etc.
• Manage the relationship with the Group’s internal / external auditors regarding funding structures, facilitate their activities and discuss their recommendations.
• Monitor the Group’s and VEON’s OpCos outstanding bonds and observe the secondary trading in term of volume and pricing for potential treasury transactions.
• Monitor existing and new regulations of the relevant stock exchanges for the Group’s and VEON’s OpCos bonds and ensure compliance.
• Monitor interest rates and markets for opportunistic and efficient re‑financing at better terms.
• Periodic review of interest rate levels in the markets where the Group and VEON’s OpCos operate to decide on the best mix of debt currencies bearing in mind natural hedging and debt cost considerations.
• Assist VEON’s OpCos in shaping their funding strategies and structures to deploy the most efficient and competitive financing solutions.
• Leverage the Group’s treasury relationships with banks and other financial institutions to improve the terms of VEON’s OpCos financing projects.
• Monitor the performance of VEON’s OpCos debts in term of repayment and compliance with financial covenants and other terms.
• Provide focus to finance team on available products in the banking structures.

• Capital Management.
• Review and finalize the portfolio assessment in terms of valuation, return and funding requirements for all VEON’s OpCos.
• Manage credit rating process and relationships with rating agencies.
• Review the Group and VEON’s OpCos funding plans and assess its implication from credit rating perspective.
• Review and finalize financial models for capital structure of agreed upon VEON’s OpCos.
• Develop dividend policy alternatives in conjunction with other relevant functions.
• Assess and monitor impact of changes in dividend policy on the Group’s capital structure and share price.
• Taking an active role in acquisitions and disposals including due diligence, sale and purchase agreements and post‑deal integration.

• Credit rating agencies management
• Maintain active dialogues with credit rating agencies on a quarterly and pro‑actively on an ad‑hoc basis upon occurrence of material (credit) developments and transactions.
• Prepare annual review meetings.
• Review and comment on draft releases by credit rating agencies.
• Actively explain the capital structure strategy and spot inconsistencies in credit ratings to secure an appropriate rating for VEON.

• Credit investor management
• Support Investor Relations team in their communications to investors from a credit investor by reviewing the debt and liquidity related slides and sections in quarterly reports and other investor presentations.
• Actively participate in credit investor meetings, credit conferences as well as in non‑deal and deal related credit road shows.
• Support investor relations team and Senior Management in answering credit and capital structure related questions from investors.

• Debt capital market transactions
• Actively participate in discussions with banking partners on debt capital market opportunities and developments.
• Co‑develop together with the Group Treasury Director capital markets strategy and advise to Group CFO and VEON Board.
• Negotiate transaction documents and bond indentures.
• Prepare investor presentation.
• Manage credit ratings.
• Coordinate with internal teams, legal, external reporting and investor relations on various aspects of the transaction.
• Engage in Investor meetings.
• Participate in and contribute to final pricing decisions.

• Bank loan negotiations
• Drive negotiations with banks for new banks loans both at HQ and Operating subsidiary levels either to refinance existing loans or to generate new funding for advancing business objectives.
• Review and negotiate the actual loan agreements for HQ loans.
• Review and coordinate loan agreement at operating subsidiaries, ensuring operating subsidiary loans are in conformity with VEON HQ loan documentation standards.
• Liaise with other functions to obtain relevant input (tax, external reporting).
• Support operating companies in understanding and analysing local loan agreements.

• Other:
• Provide technical and other support for net intercompany positions, mergers and acquisitions, strategic and other projects as needed.
• Coordination of Corporate Finance related discussions with countries.
• Provide technical Corporate Finance support on tax related questions.
• Contribute to optimizing internal capital structures within the Group.

• Group Treasury Reporting
• Oversight and approval of all Corporate Finance related treasury reporting.
• Global Corporate Finance subject matter expert (“SME”).
• Perform ad‑hoc analysis of financial and non‑financial data on request.

Critical Skills & Experience

• Significant prior experience (preferably for more than 10 years) within an international treasury function or at a leading bank (preferably both bank and corporate treasury experience) with a leadership capacity (preferably for more than 4 years).
• Banking and capital markets experience including credit analysis and multi institution debt/capital markets facility negotiation.
• Strong experience in drafting loan and capital markets prospectus documents and in negotiating loan, bond, and liability management documents.
• Strong experience in risk management.
• Experience in devising global policies and procedures.
• Master in Finance / Economics or MBA or significant and relevant alternative experience or qualifications preferred.
• Ability to work well under pressure and meet deadlines.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Strong analytical skills and financial modelling skills.
• Ability to build and maintain strong relationships in a collaborative fashion with strong influencing skills.
• Strong negotiation skills.
• Ability to lead global, virtual teams, drive change, develop skills of direct reports and overall team members, and positively impact team morale.

More about us

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Do you want to be part of a team that serves over 150 million customers across 5 dynamic markets? Do you want to pioneer new experiences for hundreds of millions in emerging economies? Do you feel at home working in a truly diverse and inclusive environment? We are VEON, a global digital operator and we scale new heights never thought possible.

Our DE&I Vision is

We aspire to create an Inclusive World for All – Inside and Beyond VEON. We aspire to create an Inclusive world for all by providing Equal voice and representation, driving growth with diverse and inclusive teams, that create products that serve Diverse needs of our customers across all dimensions of life from connectivity to digital financial inclusion, education, health and entertainment, and creating value for our people, our partners, and communities.