FP&A Manager

Overview

Who We Are The Blair Partnership is a literary and entertainment agency. We offer our clients a broad range of services including rights management, client representation and franchise management. As part of those services, we help to manage several companies on behalf of our client J.K. Rowling. Those companies are Pottermore and Bronte. These businesses benefit from shared resources and expertise provided by The Blair Partnership, but they are run by their own leaders.

There are three core pillars to The Blair Partnership’s business activity:

• Franchise Management – which encompasses brand & franchise vision and strategy, creative strategy & direction, product development, brand management & comms for the Harry Potter franchise.
• Client Management - we represent a large and eclectic list of clients’ literary and entertainment rights portfolios and pursue commercial opportunities for them through deal making in the UK, US and internationally, partner management and backlist rights management.
• Governance & support - we provide governance, resources and support to companies owned by J.K. Rowling. As part of that support, we cultivate close collaboration & strong, cohesive working practices between all the businesses.

Our vision remains to shape, nurture and grow the most imaginative and engaging brands for generations to come, working with our clients.

Our mission is to shape and connect stories to their audiences. The Blair Partnership is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace where all talent and potential is valued. We welcome people of different backgrounds, experiences, abilities and perspectives and recognise the value that this adds to our business.

The Financial Planning and Analysis Manager will work closely with the [FD], leading all Agency (The Blair Partnership (‘TBP’) and The Blair Partnership LLP (‘LLP’)) Financial Planning and Analysis, with a particular focus on revenue for budget and all subsequent reforecasts, including developing any outputs required for the Business Leadership Team and/or the TBP Board. They will support on ad hoc analysis, developing a deeper understanding of underlying performance of key areas such as Print Publishing, reviewing macro industry trends as well as underlying performance of agency titles.

As required will support the [FD] to prepare financial models to support ad hoc analysis including: review of new deal terms for clients, long range plans for the agencies, business plans for M&A targets.

Financial Planning and Analysis

Budget and reforecasts

• Own building the annual budget and subsequent reforecasts for Agency income across TBP and LLP
• Work closely with the Client Business Team to capture all new contractually agreed income (e.g. Author advances)
• For all JK Rowling titles, work with the HP Franchise Team to understand the revenue drivers and likely earnings for all types of income across all rights licensed to Warner Brothers, high priority print publishers and other partners
• Liaise with the other Finance Directors to capture the commission income due from Pottermore Limited, Bronte Film and TV Limited, and HPTP Limited
• For LLP, liaise with the Agents, helping them to develop their full year outlook, including developing a royalty calculation model, the outputs of which are used to generate the full year outlook
• Support as needed on P&L and Costs analysis as well as on revenue analysis for other businesses

Revenue analysis

Outside of the budget and reforecast cycle, lead the advancement of revenue analysis, including:

• Deepen understanding of print publishing sales performance for Harry Potter, Robert Galbraith as well as other clients
• Macro analysis of the publishing sector, identifying trends at a genre level
• Support the Publishing Team to understand their account(s) performance, as well as analysing proposed contractual renewal terms for all Harry Potter print titles

Presentations

• Own the files used to generate outputs for presentation to key stakeholders (internal and external)
• Liaise with the other FDs to ensure that they are inputting their financial information into the correct format for the TBP Board…