Role overview
Role Overview
The Director of Finance - M&A is a newly created role within FP&A at Wiley. This role partners closely with commercial and operational leaders to align on revenue assumptions, growth drivers, and synergy commitments, translating these discussions into robust, financially sound transaction analyses.
Responsibilities
Lead financial analysis for acquisitions, divestitures, and strategic partnerships on buy-side and sell-side.
Own the Finance workstream during due diligence: quality of earnings, working capital, synergy modeling, and integration/separation cost estimation.
Partner with business and operational leaders to develop and pressure-test revenue assumptions, growth drivers, and synergy targets ensuring financial models reflect proper valuation.
Collaborate closely with Corporate Development, bringing FP&A's proximity to internal data, business context, and financial planning processes to improve deal evaluation.
Own hypothetical M&A scenario planning end-to-end, relieving capacity pressure on the broader FP&A team.
Translate active and pending transactions into the operating financial plan: carve-outs, integration budgets, stranded cost analysis, and pro forma modeling.
Maintain a live deal pipeline tracker with financial context, updated for leadership review on a regular cadence.
Own post-close financial integration, working within FP&A to establish reporting structures, chart of accounts alignment, and financial process setup for newly acquired or divested businesses.
Serve as the financial integration lead across Finance, Accounting, Treasury, and Tax during the post-close period.
Develop financial frameworks to evaluate portfolio composition, ROIC, and capital deployment across inorganic activity.
Support CFO, FP&A, and Investor Relations with M&A related financial narrative for earnings, Board materials, and management presentations.
Contribute to Finance Transformation objectives building a repeatable, disciplined M&A finance playbook that institutionalizes best practices across the team.
Manage contingent and/or offshore analyst support to flex capacity with deal activity.
Build and advance due diligence templates, integration checklists, and scenario planning frameworks that make the broader FP&A team more effective over time.
Qualifications
Proven experience in investment banking, corporate development, FP&A, or a dedicated M&A finance function.
Demonstrated experience contributing to financial due diligence on buy-side and/or sell-side transactions, with particular emphasis on business partnering and assumption development alongside modeling.
Experience working across commercial and operational functions to align on synergy targets and integration plans is strongly valued.
Post-close financial integration experience is a plus but not required.
Industry background in publishing, technology, information services, data/analytics, or SaaS preferred but not required.
Strong financial modeling and valuation skills: DCF, accretion/dilution, synergy builds, working capital and quality of earnings analysis.
Fluency in separation accounting, carve-out financials, and stranded cost modeling.
Exceptional business partnering skills able to engage credibly with commercial and operational leaders and translate qualitative business insight into financial assumptions.
Clear, direct communicator who can synthesize complex analysis for the CFO, CEO, and ELT.
About The Company
Wiley is a global research and education company founded in 1807. Read more about Wiley's mission and values.