Business Manager Maternity Cover

The Company Christie’s, the world’s largest Art Business, is an incredibly exciting & enriching place to start or continue your career. Whether you work within one of our Specialist Art Departments, or in one of our more Operational teams, we are all working together with one common goal in mind: to continue the success of this 260 year old company, steeped in history, bringing fresh ideas whilst not forgetting our shared values:
Integrity, Excellence, Innovation, Responsibility & Relationships. Colleagues across all departments are truly passionate about what they do and it is inspiring to work with industry leaders across our business.

The Business Manager supports Head of Departments, Regional Managing Director and Head of Sales to drive and realise departmental objectives, profitability and operations. The Business Manager is responsible for financial, operational, team as well as administrative management and integrity.

• Participate in the implementation of the division’s global business plan.
• Prepare and deliver all internal and external communications for significant events, including policy, staffing, best practices and any strategic changes as pertaining to Auction sites.
• Implement improvements to operational systems for the department, working closely with regional management to ensure a consistent approach across the team.
• Articulate and implement needs within external support teams.
• Provide market share analysis and specialist tracker information and update Management.
• Directly supervise and manage relevant teams.
• Lead recruiting, hiring, training of non-specialist employees and plan, assign and direct work; appraise performance, reward and discipline employees; address complaints and resolve problems.
• Work with Department Head and line managers to identify staffing needs, long‑term development plans and succession planning, conduct performance reviews and set objectives in line with overall department and corporate objectives.
• Partner with Head of Departments and Head of Sales to oversee the management of the Specialist sale teams and support resource planning and development.
• Lead strategic initiatives for the departments and provide recommendations for future planning.
• Keep an overview of standard deal terms; review and prepare for escalation of all non-standard financial deals to Regional Managing Director.
• Prepare complex financial deal considerations for Business Regional Managing Director & ICO for Enhanced Hammers, advance payments and conversions; prepare complex deals for Significant Business Forum for potential guarantees and third‑party guarantee requests.
• Lead financial aspects of the sale including extended payment terms and financial meetings.
• Provide insight and information to Finance Business Partner to enable weekly pipeline updates, annual budgeting, forecasting, sale P&L and other reporting.
• Work with Finance Business Partner to ensure that all statistics are available for each sale to enable accurate debriefings post sale including pre/post sale statistics of competitors.
• Maintain profitability through monitoring deal and sale related costs and identifying possible areas for increased margin.
• Maintain relationships with critical business partners to ensure all functions run smoothly through deadlines, sales, pre and post‑sale initiatives with ICO, Legal, HR, Client Accounting etc.
• Work with Head of Sale Manager on annual sale calendar and programming.

• Degree with at least 3 years + of related work experience in financial business, people management, operations.
• Demonstrated proactive, collaborative approach.
• Ability to solve practical problems and deal with a variety of concrete variables in situations where only limited standardisation exists.
• Knowledge of Outlook, Excel, Word Processing, and Presentation software.
• Ability to create and analyse Excel spreadsheets, bar graphs, reports and business correspondence.
• Ability to effectively present information and respond to questions from colleagues and clients.
• European languages beneficial.

• 25 days annual leave + 1 day birthday leave.
• Christie’s Christmas office closure…