Financial Accountant – Senior Compensation Controller recruitment

The Glasgow Finance Division helps senior management and its individual business units manage the firm’s risk by implementing financial controls over our business activities. The division is crucial to safeguarding the firm’s franchise, reporting on current performance, and evaluating business opportunities.

A decision was made recently to transfer the compensation accounting controller and administration teams from London to Glasgow.  Therefore, the Glasgow office is looking to build a new team of approximately 19 people who will be responsible for the processing and booking of compensation related expenses for all UK employees and for employees in certain other EMEA locations.  Due to the nature of the firm’s compensation arrangements, the group is involved in processing and accounting for a range of complex compensation arrangements.  The team works closely with its counterparts in other global locations, in particular in New York and Europe, and with other departments in Morgan Stanley including Human Resources, IT and across the finance division.  The set up of this new department in Glasgow creates an exciting opportunity for someone to help create and develop this team.

The group is split into 2 main teams, which have significant interaction between them, as follows:

Payroll Administration Team:
The Payroll Administration team consists of approximately 10 people with its core function being to manage the processing of the payroll for all UK employees and for certain payrolls in EMEA.  This entails the processing of all monthly net salary and bonus payments to approximately 8,000 employees plus the payment of associated taxes and contributions to benefit plans related to these employees.

Compensation Controller Team:
The Compensation Controller team consists of approximately 8 people with its core functions being to manage the accounting for the UK payroll and certain EMEA payrolls including managing the booking of salaries and related benefits and taxes, cash bonuses, hypotaxes, severance accruals and recharges, managing currency exposure on the UK payroll entity and working with Treasury and senior management to hedge the currency exposure related to the compensation expense and providing compensation related information to legal entity controllers for disclosure in the annual statutory accounts and to the tax department for use in their tax computations.  The team is involved in providing input on technical accounting issues and liaison with different groups and individuals within the organisation.

In addition, both groups are involved in managing a number of key initiatives and projects in order to ensure that processes and procedures are kept up to date in line with best practice and in line with new legislation changes.

Senior Compensation Controller:
The successful candidate will perform a key role within the Payroll Controller team, reporting to the Head of the Payroll Controller team, who in turn will report to the Payroll Head and who is responsible for overseeing both the Controller and Administration teams.  The successful candidate will initially play a significant role in developing the new team in Glasgow and for helping to manage the successful transition of responsibilities from the London team to the new Glasgow team.

Ongoing responsibilities will incorporate a combination of project work, ownership of certain monthly processes, people management, statutory accounting, input on technical accounting issues and liaison with different groups in the firm.

Supporting a team of at least two people,  specific responsibilities will include:
• Ownership of the monthly expatriate hypotax accrual bookings and of the monthly employer tax bookings in respect of Morgan Stanley’s deferred compensation plans with responsibility for ensuring that the accounting for these processes is complete, accurate and prepared on a timely basis.
• Responsibility for the production of annual compensation related accounting disclosures under both UK GAAP and IFRS.  This includes the management of the director’s/Key Management Personnel  emoluments disclosure process, staff costs and pension fund disclosures. This process requires you to work closely with the Firm’s external auditors to ensure that disclosures are audited and liaison with the legal entity team to provide them with the correct payroll disclosures for input into their statutory accounts.
• Responsibility for the production of compensation based information requested by the Firm’s tax department for both US and UK tax reporting purposes.
• Oversight and review of the monthly management/annual statutory accounts and US Federal Reserve Reporting of the UK’s main payroll legal entity including interacting with the legal entity team who are responsible for the production of these accounts.
• Maintaining and enhancing the Accounting control framework for compensation expense.
• Responsibility for coordination of the group’s Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) reporting, documentation and self testing.
• Reviewer responsibility for certain balance sheet and PL accounts related to the above mentioned processes, reporting variances and issues to management on a monthly basis and resolving issues and queries that arise.
• Key involvement in a variety of projects undertaken by the department.
• Working with payroll IT where necessary on payroll accounting systems, including maintenance, upgrades and any necessary changes to system requirements.
• Interaction with management reporting and legal entity controller groups across both infrastructure and business unit areas, responding to queries and providing support for and analysis of compensation movements for monthly infrastructure and BU PL reporting.
• Liaison with a variety of groups and individuals (including payroll controllers in the US, Far East and within all European regions, HR, legal entity controllers, accounting policy and tax groups) in agreeing payroll policy, changes in processes, discussing payroll related issues and roll out of changes to payroll systems.
• Liaison with external and internal auditors to assist with understanding the key processes, giving access to systems for sample testing and providing evidence of key controls.

Skills Required
•  The candidate should be a qualified accountant (CIMA or ACA)
•  Strong accounting and technical knowledge with experience of compensation based accounting and disclosures is required (UK, IFRS and US GAAP knowledge).
•  Prior experience of managing teams is required as this candidate will have responsibility for overseeing and managing the work of a sub team of at least two people.
•  Good track record of managing processes and of continuously reviewing and improving processes is required