Mergers and Acquisitions Finance Analyst

**Job description**

Babble is a leading technology business that is reimagining how we do work. Founded in 2001, the company works with over 4,000 organisations in a wide range of sectors - including financial, health and education, travel and accommodation, and public services - by sourcing deploying and supporting locally the very best cloud solutions.

Babble’s growth over the last few years is one of the big success stories in its industry. This is demonstrated by the private equity investment of Graphite Capital in November 2020 - which was supported by reinvestment from LDC and management - to accelerate the buy and build strategy for the business. Annual revenue has rapidly grown to £40m - over 90% of which is recurring. It has over 25,000 cloud-based users, 34,000 mobile connections and 4,000 CCaaS supported agents.

**Overview**

Babble is a highly acquisitive private equity backed UK Cloud Solutions Provider. Babble has made over 30 acquisitions in the last 3 years and is looking to accelerate its buy and build strategy further. We are currently recruiting for a Finance Analyst to join the team to support with the appraisal and financial due diligence of Babble’s target acquisitions.

**Key Responsibilities**

Analyze various data sources as required (e.g. management accounts, accounting records, supplier invoices, billing reports, payroll reports etc.) and produce a databook for each target company so the financial performance and position of the target company can be fully assessed by the M&A team ahead of formal due diligence being started. Typical analysis that these databooks will include are:

- Monthly profit and loss accounts and balance sheets prepared in accordance with Babble’s accounting policies and reporting format
- Monthly analysis of revenue by type, customer and product
- Monthly analysis of cost of sales by type and supplier
- Monthly analysis of gross profit by type
- Analysis of gross margins by type, product and customer (where possible)
- Monthly analysis of salary costs by employee and expense type (e.g. basic pay, commission, overtime, employers NI etc)
- Monthly analysis of overheads by category, with an itemized breakdown of any category with material spend
- Reconciliation of management accounts to statutory accounts
- Assess and validate underlying trading performance before formal due diligence is started
- Work alongside the financial due diligence provider or other individuals within the M&A team to provide supplementary analysis as required during the acquisition process
- Ad hoc tasks related to the financial appraisal /due diligence of target companies

**What good looks like for this role**
- You will be counted on to manage your own case load in a timely and professional manner dealing with all manner of queries and disputes for subscription-based contracts.
- In more difficult cases you will need to decide when to escalate them to the Finance Managers for resolution.
- You must be cool under pressure and will need to be confident in your role as you will be dealing with individuals in senior positions when resolving contract disputes and queries.
- You will need to create and maintain strong relationships both within and outside the organisation, as you will be working with other teams across the business to ensure services are ended as per the client’s instructions.
- This is an extremely fast paced team, you need to be tenacious, conscientious, efficient, and diligent at all times.

**Requirements for the role**
- Worked as a financial analyst, manipulating and reconciling large amounts of data, for 2+ years
- Strong data analytics skills in Microsoft Excel
- Recognized accountancy qualification or training to be an accountant
- Comfortable operating in a fast paced, highly acquisitive environment
- Highly competent with detailed financial analysis, including variance analysis and mapping of profit and loss account line items
- Strong communicator and team player
- Experience of working on company acquisitions and involvement in financial due diligence processes

**What you also need to know**

Schedule:

- Monday to Friday
- Hours will be core UK hours (8am - 5pm)

**Why would you work at Babble?**
- Competitive salary
- 23 days annual leave plus bank holidays with increased annual leave based on length of service

**The recruitment journey**

We want to fill this role quickly, but we want to get the right person for the role. The recruitment process will consist of a screening call with the Manager. If you proceed past this then you will have a second follow up interview with one other member of the Executive Leadership Team / management team.