Finance Business Partner

Hodder & Stoughton; Greater London; On-site; GBP 50,000 - 60,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Private medical insurance

Dental insurance

Generous pension schemes

Retail discounts

Cycle to Work scheme

Eye care vouchers

Training library

Mentoring programs

Staff networks

Job summary

Hachette UK in London’s Headline Finance division is seeking a qualified accountant to act as a financial and strategic partner for Headline’s departments. You will analyse performance, provide clear financial insight, and support decision-making.

Reporting to the Headline Finance Director, you will deliver monthly management packs and ad hoc reports, ensuring timely month-end processing. The role blends office-based work with homeworking as part of a London-based team.

Qualifications

• Qualified accountant with proven experience in a business-facing role.
• Ability to communicate financial information to non-financial colleagues.
• Well organized with the ability to plan workloads and meet deadlines.
• Strong Excel skills; SAP experience and publishing-industry familiarity desirable.

Responsibilities

• Partner with Headline departments to assess financial impact of decisions.
• Analyse performance against budget and evaluate future projects.
• Produce monthly management packs for Headline leadership and ad hoc reports.
• Collaborate with Management Accounts to ensure timely month-end reporting.

Skills

Financial analysis

Excel

Communication

Planning

Education

Qualified accountant (ACCA/CIMA)

Tools

SAP

Job description

Return

Division

Hachette UK

Department

Finance

Location

Carmelite House, 50 Victoria Embankment, London, United Kingdom, EC4Y 0DZ

Salary

£50,000-£60,000 dependent on experience and location (+bonus +benefits)

Contact type

Full Time Permanent

Publishing division

Hachette UK

Closing date

Friday, 13th November 2026

Who We Are And What We Do

About Hachette UK & Headline

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

• 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 Tech and 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