But the role of the CFO also changed in the 1990s in a way that set the scene for trouble.A decade ago, most CFOs had a professional accountancy qualification.
Unpleasant for CFOs, too: their remuneration, lots of it in options, has moved up briskly in the past decade, in line with that of chief executives.Even where companies do not do naughty things to their earnings, the relationship between chief executive and CFO has grown closer.
Last year, Peter McLean, who leads the CFO practice at Spencer Stuart, a firm of headhunters, looked at the qualifications of CFOs at Fortune 500 companies.
For CFOs, executive tenure these days is so fragile that recession is almost irrelevant; they should always watch their backs.Emerging challenges"Break Through"By Tim BurkeThe tests facing companies from emerging economies with global growth ambitions are the subject of February's cover story for CFO Europe.
Auditors are fighting back with "client continuance" assessments: many are ditching problematic clients.The CFO-auditor relationship is unlikely ever to return to its chummy past (a good thing perhaps).
For its June cover story, CFO magazine speaks to the ten female CFOs who made the Fortune 500 in the last year, nine of whom replaced men at their firms.
This is according to the latest quarterly poll, spanning mid-March to mid-June, of over 1,000 CFOs conducted by Duke University in America, Tilburg University in the Netherlands and CFO, a sister publication of The Economist (click here for the full results).
This left the share of female CFOs at America's largest companies unchanged, at just under 8%.Related items What's in the journals, May 2008May 31st 2008 Chief executives: How to get to the topMay 29th 2008 CFO in focus, May 2008May 23rd 2008 CFO in focus, April 2008Apr 22nd 2008Notably, many of these women had to move companies or indeed countries in order to move up.
At an event for equity analysts in February, Google did roll out the "CFO", but he was the chief food officer (ie, chef), Charlie Ayers, who talked about his grilled pork tenderloin.
For its May cover package, CFO magazine draws on a new survey to argue that there may be hope for both.Once "close and collegial," the CFO-auditor relationship turned sour after the passing of the Sarbanes-Oxley act, "when auditors drew back from their clients in the name of objectivity".
During the trial period, the ads under-performed to such an extent that it impacted the company's bottom line: Twitter CFO Anthony Noto blamed the fact that the company missed revenue expectations in the first quarter of 2015 on the objective-based ads.
