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CFO opportunities on the rise: Key trends for aspiring leaders

By Bryan Strickland

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Increased turnover, driven by a trend toward shorter tenures, is creating more opportunities for aspiring leaders to step into CFO roles at public companies, and women are filling those roles at an elevated level.

Globally, 44 women were appointed as CFOs over the first half of 2024, the most in five years, according to the Global CFO Turnover Index from management consulting firm Russell Reynolds Associates. Women comprised 26% of CFO hires during the first quarter and 28% in the second quarter. In 2023, the highest quarter was 24% (the lowest was 10%).

At the end of 2023, 18.5% of CFOs at Fortune 500 and S&P 500 companies were women, according to an annual Crist Kolder Associates report, a figure that nearly doubled over the course of a decade.

Other trends in the Russell Reynolds report point to increased opportunities for all interested candidates:

  • Globally, 163 CFOs were appointed during the first half of 2024, on pace for the year to eclipse the five-year high of 292 appointments in 2023.
  • In the second quarter of 2024, 3.3% of CFOs departed, but 4.1% of companies hired a CFO. That difference of 0.8 percentage points in favor of CFO hires is the third largest in the 22 quarters tracked by Russell Reynolds since the beginning of 2019.
  • The average tenure of an outgoing CFO in the first half of 2024 was 5.7 years, the lowest figure in five years. Why are they leaving? Fifty-four percent are retiring or moving to board roles exclusively, up 15 percentage points year-over-year — a five-year high.
  • Fifty-nine percent of CFOs appointed in 2023 had never held a CFO role at a public company, and during the first half of 2024, 56% of CFOs hired were internal candidates. When companies did look outside for CFOs last quarter, they tended to value experience: 41% of external hires had previous CFO experience, the third-highest percentage, along with the third quarter of 2022, for a quarter since 2019.

— To comment on this article or to suggest an idea for another article, contact Bryan Strickland at Bryan.Strickland@aicpa-cima.com.