Financial Controller – Financial Planning and Analysis – Al-Futtaim Group

Al-Futtaim Group’s Real Estate division is looking for a Financial Controller to strengthen the FP&A side of its finance function – a role focused on financial planning, performance management, and management reporting across a portfolio that spans one of the region’s largest real estate businesses. This isn’t a pure transactional accounting role; it’s a planning and analysis seat with real visibility into how the business is performing against plan.

The day-to-day mix typically includes budgeting and forecasting cycles, variance analysis against plan, preparing management reports that leadership actually uses to make decisions, and strengthening the financial planning processes themselves as the Real Estate Group’s portfolio evolves. There’s a strong cross-functional element too, working closely with operational and asset management teams to make sure the numbers reflect what’s actually happening on the ground across the portfolio.

It suits an experienced finance professional with a strong FP&A background – ideally with some exposure to real estate, though not necessarily required – who’s comfortable moving between detailed analysis and the kind of clear, decision-ready reporting that senior leadership expects. Qualified accountants with management reporting experience in a sizeable organization will find the scope of this role a natural fit.

Real estate portfolios move slowly compared to some businesses, but the financial planning behind them has to be precise, because the capital amounts involved are large and the consequences of a bad forecast take a long time to unwind. This Financial Controller role is where that precision gets built into the Real Estate Group's planning cycle - making sure budgets reflect realistic assumptions, variances get explained rather than just reported, and leadership gets management information they can actually act on rather than raw numbers that need translating. Strong FP&A work here directly shapes decisions about where capital gets allocated across the portfolio, which developments get prioritized, and how performance gets measured against plan. Given the scale of Al-Futtaim's real estate holdings, even modest improvements in forecasting accuracy or reporting clarity compound into materially better decision-making across a large and complex business. Over multiple planning cycles, that kind of disciplined FP&A work also builds leadership's confidence in the numbers coming out of the division, which makes every subsequent capital decision faster and less contested.

FP&A experience inside a real estate business of this scale is a genuinely strong credential, because real estate financial planning involves a distinct set of skills - long investment horizons, asset-level performance analysis, development cash flow modeling - that pure corporate FP&A roles often don't touch. Building that specific expertise inside one of the region's largest diversified groups gives a finance professional a real edge when competing for senior finance roles either within real estate specifically or in broader corporate finance functions afterward. People who perform well in roles like this typically progress into Head of FP&A, Finance Director, or CFO-track positions, either within Al-Futtaim's various business units or at other large organizations in the region. The combination of qualified accounting credentials with hands-on real estate FP&A experience is also particularly valued by regional real estate developers and investment firms, who are often looking for finance leaders who understand both the accounting mechanics and the operational realities of a property portfolio. Working within a group as large and diversified as Al-Futtaim also provides unusually broad exposure to how finance functions operate across different business models, which is valuable even for those who eventually specialize elsewhere. It's also a role that builds genuine comfort operating at the pace and scale of a major diversified group, which is a different muscle than FP&A work at a smaller, single-business organization typically develops.

• Professional accounting qualification (ACCA, CPA, CA, or equivalent) strongly preferred
• Solid experience in FP&A, budgeting, forecasting, and management reporting
• Experience working within a large, multi-business-unit organization; real estate exposure is an advantage
• Strong Excel and financial modeling skills; familiarity with ERP/reporting systems
• Ability to translate detailed financial analysis into clear recommendations for senior leadership
• Strong stakeholder management skills across finance and operational teams