Cfo to Ceo

CFO can be a better CEO! Comment

The CFO possesses many significant advantages as well as disadvantages if he/she is chosen to become the CEO. Recently an increasing number of company boards have decided that in order to best serve shareholders it is prudent to promote the CFO to CEO. CFOs themselves remain reticent about any personal ambitions beyond the CFO role - at least in public. But given this recent string of high profile promotions there is an increasing recognition that they have what it takes to take over the CEO role. To understand why CFOs are more frequently getting the top job it is important to know what the contemporary holder of the post does with his time.. Bluntly put, CFOs are now a much more exciting breed. In the 1990s, the CFO role became more dynamic and strategic, moving from being merely a functional head to also being a corporate leader.

Previous to 1990’s, there was an opinion that CFO is a person who possess only financial abilities. His major domain is finance, so he could not handle other options. But this opinion has taken a paradigm shift as nowadays companies are promoting their CFO to CEO. Reasons primarily being

• At a time when finance plays an ever-larger role in corporate strategy and many CFO’s portfolio of skills would seem to serve well as a platform for that final leap to the boss's suite.

• About a fifth of all CEO’s in the United Kingdom and the United States once served as CFO.’

• However, recent high-profile examples—including Indra Nooyi at PepsiCo ,Werner Wenning at Bayer, Yoichi Wada at Square Enix, and Charles Chao at Sina—show that boards all around the globe are willing to turn to the CFO as the next chief executive.

• CFO’s with financial backgrounds that have expanded their skills, experience, and roles are good candidates for CEO positions.

• The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is responsible for the company's financial statements, but in many cases CFO’s carry a broader set of responsibilities,...