In my opinion, promoting the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) can be a risky move. I will first explain the pros and then the cons of moving the CFO to CEO, and why I would be against this move most every time.The duties of the CEO are he /she should communicate well, be good at managing his managers, have leadership skills, understand the company's product and operations, provide a goal and set the direction the company need to move towards. There are many more things a CEO must have such as people skills, how to gets his plan off paper and into the hearts and minds of the employees. Over time the CEO has improved these skills as he has climbed up ...view middle of the document...
The CFO will have knowledge of the financing of ongoing activities and the necessary monies to keep operations up and running. Any company has many different projects and will be moving in many different directions at once. The CFO must have first hand working knowledge of pay roles, taxes, servicing equipment, inventories and many more. The number one reason most company fail is because of operational capital. The CFO will have already established a working relationship with all department managers. He/she should know which department needs an over haul or which will need little or know help at his time of take over. Since most CFO have been required to travel to off site location and other subsidiary there will be little more than a formality with him being promoted to CEO. The CFO has also been given the opportunity to meet the board members along with many customers of the company by sitting in on meeting and talking with customers."Part of the reason for the trend towards recruiting the CFO who can behave as strategic partners is that the investor community looks much more critically at the business performance and management strengths and weaknesses of corporate. Say Ian Butcher, finance director at UK recruitment firm Whitehead Mann Group: "The two most visible people in the company to the investor community are the chief executive and the finance director." How a CFO can graduate to CEO; Corporate Finance; Lond...