Markus Pöllmann.
Unsolicited Application — Proxima Fusion, Munich

Hello Proxima!

I am Markus, full of energy and the will to build up your company for the energy challenges of our times and coming generations!

After a rewarding career so far in the media and TV production industry, I want to utilize my skills, based on my profound education and in-depth finance knowledge, to help achieve a sustainable and carbon-free energy supply.

Markus Pöllmann

Your job postings put it better than I could: turning these designs into a working power plant takes ownership across every discipline, “from physics and engineering to software, manufacturing, law, and business functions.” I am applying for that last one.

I do not bring plasma physics. I bring the discipline that turns €411 million into hardware without losing control of it on the way. Film and television production is structurally the same problem in a different costume: every project is a contract with milestones, acceptance criteria, suppliers, change requests, and a completion risk that lands on somebody's balance sheet. I currently run that as CFO of LEONINE Studios' Non-Fiction division — four production companies, more than €100m in revenue — and before that inside a listed MDAX group, where the numbers had to survive contact with the capital markets.

You are not advertising a finance role. You are advertising a Commercial & Contracts Lead for a first-of-a-kind facility in the several-hundred-million-euro range, a Program Schedule Manager to own the Alpha master schedule, three procurement managers, and an AI Solutions Engineer to automate business operations with n8n and Python. I have spent the last years doing versions of all four — the first three as a finance lead, the last one for my own finance function, by building the tools myself rather than waiting for them. Where that fits best is your call, not mine.

What this page adds beyond the CV: two of those tools, designed and built end-to-end with AI-assisted engineering, for exactly the two problems above — contract revenue recognition under IFRS 15, and multi-year workforce demand versus capacity. Both anonymized here: synthetic companies, synthetic numbers, same logic.

Fifteen years, one direction

↑ Scope of responsibility 2011 2016 2021 2026 Trainee Career start 2011 Group Controlling & PMI ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE Head of Controlling LEONINE Holding 2019–2021 CFO i&u TV Produktion CFO, Non-Fiction LEONINE Group 2025– 2015–2019 2022–2024

Fifteen years in the same direction: from trainee to CFO of a division with more than €100m in revenue and four production companies underneath it. No detours, no reinventions — one profession, learned properly and then taken as far as it goes.

Four years of that were inside a listed MDAX group, where the numbers had to survive contact with capital markets. The rest was building finance functions from the ground up, twice — which is the part I would expect to do again here, because a company that has just raised €411 million is about to need one that scales faster than it did.

15+
Years in finance
4
Production entities
€100m+
Divisional revenue

Flick through my background

01 · What I bring
Core competencies at a glance

Expertise in IFRS & consolidation matters, IFRS 15 revenue recognition, and German GAAP (HGB), combined with a hands-on track record of building the finance tooling myself instead of waiting for someone to deliver it.

IFRS 15 & ConsolidationGerman GAAP (HGB)Multi-Entity Reporting Project & Contract ControllingBudget Governance FP&A Business PartneringTreasury & Cash ForecastingTax Compliance CoordinationAI-Enabled Finance AutomationM&A Integration SAP / IBM TM1Multidimensional Databases
02 · Jan 2025 – Present
LEONINE Holding GmbH — Munich
CFO, Non-Fiction Division, LEONINE Group
KKR-backed media group
Jan 2025 – Present
  • CFO for LEONINE's TV/streaming Non-Fiction production division (>€100m revenue), spanning four production companies
  • Drive standardization across four production entities; partner with the divisional CEO on cost and efficiency potential
  • Own budget governance and resource allocation across the division
  • Designed an AI-driven IFRS 15 contract analysis tool — audit-trail, versioning, citation-backed documentation
03 · Sep 2019 – Dec 2024
LEONINE Holding GmbH — Cologne / Munich
Head of Controlling (2019–2021) → CFO, i&u TV Produktion GmbH (2022–2024)
Sep 2019 – Dec 2024
  • Led integration of independent film, series, licensing, and distribution businesses into a unified group consolidation framework — chart-of-accounts mapping, IFRS conversions
  • Designed and implemented a group-wide controlling platform on IBM TM1 (Apollo); monthly integrated IFRS estimates (P&L, balance sheet, cash flow) with group consolidation from March 2020
  • Built and led the Accounting & Controlling department for i&u TV Produktion GmbH (Cologne) from the ground up
  • Identified and executed restructuring measures worth >€3m per annum
04 · Jan 2015 – Aug 2019
ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE — Munich (listed group, MDAX)
Head of Central Commerce Controlling → Director Group Controlling → Sen. Controller, Investment Controlling & PMI
Jan 2015 – Aug 2019
  • Managed group and segment-level financial KPIs (P&L, cash flow) in coordination with capital-market expectations; owned monthly/quarterly close
  • Supported the Group CFO and Group Chief Controller in investor and analyst communications
  • Led cross-functional legal-entity reduction programs via corporate mergers, reporting directly to the Management Board
  • Built the finance function for the newly formed M&A-driven business unit "7Commerce"
05 · Foundations
Education, languages, systems

Education

Hochschule RegensburgDipl. Betriebswirt (FH), European Business Studies — grade 1.9 (2006–2011)
Oxford Brookes, UKExchange year, Int'l Business Management (2008–2009)
LanguagesGerman — Native · English — Business Fluent

Systems & Tools

PlanningIBM TM1 (Apollo), MIK OLAP
Finance OpsDATEV, Candis.io, SAP BOFC, SAP R/3
AI-Assisted EngineeringClaude Code — used to design & operate the IFRS 15 tool
Automationn8n, Python, Docker — self-hosted, including the server this page is served from
Bonus · Off the clock
I organize more than budgets

Great teams aren't built in spreadsheets alone. Every year I organize LEONINE's team entry for our company run — because people who show up for each other outside the office work better together inside it too.

LEONINE team at the company run, doing a Mexican wave
The LEONINE team, mid-wave, at this year's company run.
Let's talk
Full CV, cover letter, and the two live builds

The two tools referenced above are live below — simplified UI, synthetic data. And the full documents, for the actual application.

Swipe, use ← → , or click a step number

Featured Builds

Workforce planning · Multi-year

Demand vs. Capacity Planner

Rolls up per-project staffing plans into demand versus capacity by role, month, and business unit — with a board-ready summary that derives hiring / contractor / reduce recommendations from the underlying gap rather than from a gut call.

Why it is here: you are hiring a Program Schedule Manager to own the Alpha master schedule. This is the resource half of that question, and I built it because I needed the answer myself.
Stack: Python, SQLite, scenario & multi-year planning
View sample dashboard →
AI-driven · IFRS 15

Contract Revenue-Recognition Analyzer

Upload a production contract → the tool applies the IFRS 15 five-step model, classifies point-in-time versus over-time revenue recognition, and produces an audit-ready, citation-backed report — with version history and a four-eyes review workflow, because “AI-assisted” cannot mean “unaudited.”

Why it is here: your Commercial & Contracts Lead posting is about owner-side contracts, change control, and commitment tracking on a first-of-a-kind build. Different contracts, same discipline — and I read them for a living.
Stack: Python, AI-assisted analysis, PDF/Office parsing
View sample analysis →