Senior Investment Officer

The Manufacturing, Agribusiness & Services (MAS) Industry Group plays an important role in supporting IFC’s strategic priorities, covering investments in the global manufacturing and services, agribusiness, health and education sectors. MAS’ sectors play a critical role in providing goods and services to consumers, addressing core needs, creating jobs, contributing to government revenues and stimulating growth. In IFC’s client countries, these sectors can account for as much as 80% of overall economic activity and can account for up to 90% of employment activity, particularly in the poorest countries.

MAS is seeking an experienced Senior Investment Officer to be based in Suva, Fiji or Sydney, Australia, to complement its team and cover the manufacturing, agribusiness, and consumer services sectors primarily for its Pacific Island operations. The successful candidate will be a crucial member of the Asia Pacific MAS team and will work closely with IFC offices in the region as well as the global team to develop new business opportunities, execute transactions as well as manage portfolio investments. 

Duties and Accountabilities:

• Lead formulation and coordinate implementation of a business development strategy for Pacific Island countries.
• Maintain high-level relationships (CEO and other C-suite levels) with clients in the Pacific Islands region to understand industry trends and create new short-term and future business opportunities.
• Develop long-term relationships with key clients and other stakeholders (e.g., government officials, regulators) at the working level to identify and act on opportunities for repeat business and engage effectively with other syndicate lenders at the working level.
• Shape business leads into actionable concepts ready for mandate by identifying and screening potential investment opportunities, preparing the investment thesis, and leading the pre-CRM structuring of those opportunities.
• Lead teams in structuring deals that strike a balance between clients’ expectations and protecting IFCs and other lenders’ rights.
• Help shape upstream market creation approaches or interventions for a sector, product, or region and engage with senior officials across the WBG and government offices to identify viable market and regulatory reforms that may involve IDA or FCS
• Prepare investment committee materials focusing on financial and nonfinancial risk assessment and deal structuring.
• Use networks to keep project moving and collaborate with key internal stakeholders to obtain buy-in on deals and negotiate risk and mitigation strategies. Ensure seamless communication flow and cooperation among all IFC team members and external stakeholders.
• Lead quarterly assessments of ratings, loan loss reserves, or valuations for MAS Pacific Islands portfolio; and conduct quality control over work performed by analysts and junior investment officers.
• Analyze important portfolio trends to identify where they are most concentrated and the contributing factors.
• Supervise the gathering of lessons learned on essential topics across the portfolio, connect trends from different areas of the portfolio, and make recommendations on how these could improve business development and transaction structuring.
• Assess and articulate the development impact of more complex transactions at the sector or subsector level.
• Negotiate waivers, amendments, and rescheduling; and prepare official restructuring memos for approval.
• Oversee or supervise assigned staff and consultants. Develop assigned staff and members of the broader team through mentoring, coaching, and providing on-the-job learning opportunities.
• Ensure quality control of work products.

Selection Criteria:

• Master’s degree in a related field and at least 8 to 12 years of relevant experience. Related fields of education include business, finance, or economics or an area of expertise specific to a sector, subject matter, or industry specialty.
• Relevant experience could include a proven track record in business consulting or investment banking or operational experience in the sector or technical or professional field.
• Capacity to understand, enable, and participate in market creation opportunities for multiple countries by demonstrating long-term perspective, open-mindedness, persistence, innovation, and ability to leverage all available tools (including de-risking tools); good understanding of the roles and value-add of IFC and WBG in new markets.
• Understand relevant country strategies and obstacles or how to achieve them.
• Capacity to lead successful negotiations with clients and different stakeholders based on an in-depth understanding of IFC requirements, policies, and practices, as well as client and stakeholder interests. Ability to offer alternative solutions to capitalize on opportunities and overcome impasses.
• Engage at a senior level to offer alternative solutions in complex contexts, overcome impasses, and ultimately enable the delivery of projects or programs.
• Has a reputation for listening carefully to clients and stakeholders and asking targeted questions to understand their needs and determine the viability of a business opportunity.
• Ability to build long-term engagement with clients and credibility by demonstrating knowledge of their business, sector, and culture; maintain an ongoing dialogue on their business needs, operations, and strategies, as well as opportunities for strategically aligned business deals.
• Ability to maintain client engagement during the portfolio stage to identify growth opportunities, address emerging problems, and focus on actions that promote sustainability and ensure that overall development impact objectives are met.
• Build and maintain extensive networks in sectors, country, and region to bring new engagements, and business opportunities.
• IFC/WBG: Ability to interact effectively with working-level WBG staff and participate in collaborative interventions or /projects that enable private sector investment by exercising sensitivity to differences in corporate cultures, priorities, and operating practices and/or requirements.
• Public Sector: Ability to participate and constructively contribute in meetings with mid-level government officials on constraints to private sector investment in their countries.
• Ability to develop a client engagement plan and implement it by maintaining ongoing relationships with senior-level clients, developing a deep knowledge of their business and priorities, anticipating their unexpressed needs, and helping them look beyond markets where they are currently active.
• Networks: Possesses an extensive internal and external network with key players in the sector, country, region, or specialization (e.g., legal, credit industry specialists) and an ability to leverage those networks to maintain expertise, identify and capitalize on business opportunities, bring deals to closure, and obtain approvals.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills. Ability to describe complex issues, approaches, and lessons in a manner that is relevant and understandable to clients/stakeholders.
• Ability to comment effectively on documents, develop junior staff as writers, and lead the writing process of business-specific documents.
• Ensure final products are aligned with the needs and expectations of intended audiences.
• Integrate a broad range of complex issues, challenges, perspectives, and recommendations into a cohesive narrative.
• Able to clearly articulate IFC’s requirements, value-add, financial and non-financial risks, development impact, and sustainability measurement in a way that is relevant to and understandable by clients and stakeholders.
• Able to orally present and confidently defend a sound rationale for proposed deals in a compelling way that is appropriate to the audience and engenders their support, including by contributing to (and supervising contributions of team members) the preparation of well-written IRM books, board papers, and complex portfolio documentation.
• Able to clearly illustrate the long-term financial and economic benefit of IFC/WBG offerings and how those benefits align with client and government needs and priorities, including in more difficult contexts (IDA and FCS).
• Ability to engage and guide productive discussions with key stakeholders and decision-makers where there is resistance to proposed business opportunities or deals and where mutual understanding ultimately occurs.
• Ability to supervise staff in business development, processing, portfolio management, or specialty areas by providing technical guidance and delegating work to build and effectively use the talents of staff and balance workloads.
• Ability to guide, advise, mentor, and coach junior staff and peers to develop and broaden their scope of skills, including providing on-the-job learning opportunities. Critical for FCS and other challenging markets.
• Tap into and leverage resources through expertise in an industry, region, or sector, including leveraging market dynamics, navigating regulatory structures, and mitigating risks.
• Read and anticipate shifts in market trends and the implications for IFC’s current and future business.
• Ability to review the financial analytical work performed by team members for moderately complex transactions based on in-depth analytical and financial modelling skills and experience to know what to look for inefficiently, ensuring quality control and directing the appropriate analysis to understand risk factors in a project.
• Ability to direct and review complex financial information and financial analytical work performed by team members and quickly assess what it means, as well as identify where there are gaps, inaccuracies, or inappropriate applications.
• Recognized for financial expertise across a region or sector and for applying that expertise and innovative ideas to turn leads into viable business propositions and pipelines that are aligned with IFC, industry, and country strategies, bankable, and have additionality and development impact.
• Capacity of problem-solving to effectively articulate options and recommend actions for both distressed assets and emerging issues for strategic and top-tier clients to achieve outcomes that benefit both IFC and its clients.
• Ability to identify systemic risks and integrity issues in the region/ sector.
• Ability to bring projects to closure by anticipating the needs of key stakeholders and where a project is likely to face challenges and effectively applying mitigating strategies.

Source: https://worldbankgroup.csod.com/ats/careersite/JobDetails.aspx?id=29440&site=1