‘Long gone are the days where we just provided numbers’: The CFO-to-CEO pipeline is growing but does a finance background always make a good leader?
Source: Fortune ·
One in five new CEOs at Europe's largest listed companies came from finance last year. But the transition from managing the numbers to running the business requires a broader set of skills.
From the source
When Toyota needed a new chief executive this year, it looked one seat over. Kenta Kon, the carmaker’s chief finance officer, took the top job in April. Kon joins a long list of CFOs that have risen to the CEO role, including ConocoPhillips CEO Andy O’Brien, CME Group’s Lynne Fitzpatrick and Unilever’s Fernando Fernandez. In Europe, 21% of CEO appointments at the continent’s largest listed companies last year were previously CFOs—second only to divisional chiefs, according to data published by executive search firm Spencer Stuart. “Long gone are the days where we provided the numbers and asked somebody else to tell the story,” says Darren Ellis, CFO for Europe, Americas, Africa, and the Middle East at Standard Chartered. “The CFO now needs to be able to tell that story.” Ellis believes that there is now much more crossover between the CFO and CEO role, including setting strategy, allocating capital, steering technology investment, navigating geopolitical risk, and speaking with…