The Inside View

I recently sat down with a Finance Director who's just returned to Sydney after several years running finance for a global FMCG business out of London. Two things came out of that conversation worth sharing: what it's actually like job-searching as a returning exec, and what's genuinely happening in the liquor category on both sides of the world.

The market doesn't value global experience the way you'd expect

There's a real split in how the local market treats offshore experience. Candidates tend to land in one of two camps: the Australian corporate CFO, or the multinational Finance Director. The market doesn't always translate cleanly between them.

If your next move is regional, Singapore, anywhere in APAC, a global multinational background is highly valued. Employers there understand exactly what it means to have sat in a global exec team, in front of a global board, hearing the conversations that get made at that level.

Locally, it's inconsistent. Some Australian employers rate that experience highly. Others don't value it at all. Worse, they can see time overseas as a mark against you, as if you've been out of the local game too long to be useful in it. It depends entirely on who you're talking to.

There's also a perception gap that cuts both ways. From inside a global HQ, Australia gets talked about the way people here talk about New Zealand or Fiji: small, low-priority, a rounding error on the group P&L. Coming home from that and hearing how seriously the local market talks about itself is its own adjustment.

Title inflation is real — and it runs in your favour, then against you

Career velocity overseas is faster, full stop. London is a market where people can elevate their role level with far less tenure than Sydney requires. It's common to see someone leave here as a senior analyst and come back four years later as "Head of Finance," having changed roles almost every year while away.

Sydney works the opposite way. Progression through the ranks locally tends to be slower and more tenure-based. The same jump in title typically takes longer to earn here than it does in London.

The catch: it means a returning candidate's resume can read like a faster trajectory than the local market is used to seeing, and employers assessing the return have to look past the title and test the scope directly. Returning candidates should expect to be questioned on it, not because the experience isn't real, but because the pace it was earned at doesn't match the pace the local market moves at.

Reset your expectations early, not three months in

A pattern I see constantly with returning executives is that they arrive with a fixed idea of the exact role, level and package they want, based on where they left off overseas. Three months into a real search, most soften that view once they've seen what the local market is actually offering.

The executives who tend to do well are the ones who get calibrated early, through conversations with recruiters and hiring managers, not through months of rejected applications. Being told the market reality in week one is far more useful than discovering it in month four.

It's also worth staying visible across the whole market, not just direct applications. Recruiters don't pool candidates across agencies, and even within one agency a candidate can get miscoded, tagged as "permanent only" long after they've opened up to contract or interim work, unless they proactively update where they stand. If you've broadened your search, say so, to everyone you've spoken to, not just the last person.

Liquor: the UK and Australian markets are more alike than different

On the category itself, this is where it got interesting. The structural pressure on liquor is remarkably similar in London and Sydney right now.

On-premise (bars and restaurants) is under the same pressure in both markets: steep price rises, shrinking pack sizes, and overall spend down, except for a smaller segment that's still spending heavily regardless of cost. The macro indicators track almost identically on both sides of the world.

The generational shift away from full-strength drinking is happening in both markets too, and it's not purely a cost-of-living story. There's a genuine health-consciousness driver behind it. Low- and no-alcohol alternatives are booming, with the trend accelerating fastest out of the US. GLP-1 medications are now common enough in both the UK and Australia that they're being cited as a real, tangible factor suppressing alcohol consumption: less appetite, less desire to drink, full stop. And the younger-drinker pattern isn't abstinence. It's more common to see someone start on a full-strength drink and switch to non-alcoholic later in the same session.

Locally, there's an additional structural factor layered on top: Australia's changing migration mix. A growing share of new arrivals come from cultures where alcohol consumption is lower or largely absent. That's a genuine, permanent shift in the size of the addressable market, distinct from the generational and health-driven trends, and one the UK doesn't have in the same form.

The China and US effect on top of all that

Layer the macro picture on top of the structural shifts above, and liquor becomes one of the hardest categories in FMCG to run right now.

China has been a major pressure point for premium liquor, wine in particular. Trade tension, softer domestic sentiment and tighter consumer spending in China have hit export volumes that a lot of local and global drinks businesses built real scale on. That demand isn't simply coming back. It's forcing a genuine reset of forecasts and pricing models built on a customer base that's changed shape.

The US adds a second layer, less through direct trade exposure and more through price and currency flow-through. US consumer confidence and spending patterns move global spirits and wine pricing, and that volatility lands directly in margin models for businesses here and in the UK. It's a level of pricing and currency risk that commercial finance teams simply weren't modelling for a few years ago.

None of this is separate from the generational and demographic shifts. It compounds them. A category already losing volume to changing drinking habits is also losing margin certainty to two of the world's largest economies moving in ways liquor businesses can't control.

What it means for hiring

Liquor businesses on both sides of the world need finance and commercial leaders who can do three things at once: manage margin through genuine macro and currency volatility out of China and the US, navigate a category that's structurally shrinking in its traditional form, and still deliver the numbers the board expects. That's a different skill set to running a stable category through steady growth, and it's exactly the kind of complexity that someone returning from a global role, having already navigated disruption at scale, is well placed to step into.

The advice for anyone in that position: don't wait for the perfect permanent role to appear. Network broadly, be open to interim and advisory work along the way, and be upfront with every recruiter and contact about exactly what you're open to. The right opportunity in this market is rarely the first one you see. It's the one that comes through the fifth conversation you didn't expect to matter.