Reply #11: More finance chiefs are dropping out [View All]

[RawMaterials]

Chief financial officers, the people whose knack for numbers lifted them into the executive suite, are becoming a statistic themselves.

More CFOs are resigning, retiring or getting fired. A buildup in the demands, pressures and risks has turned the position into what some describe as a thankless chore. And corporate cost cutting has shrunk finance staffs, leaving CFOs with less help to shoulder heavier workloads.

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Suzanne MacCormack used to be one of those stressed-out executives. As a CFO for software maker Moldflow, her brain was stuffed full of financial ratios.

But the calculation that prompted MacCormack to quit Feb. 3 had nothing to do with revenue or earnings. It was what she calls the imbalanced "risk-reward and fun ratio" of the CFO job.

"So many of my peers have said the same thing — so I'm watching and waiting for them to leave the ranks as I have," says MacCormack, who's now working at a venture capital firm. It is a private company and doesn't have to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley rules. Plus, she's now working 55 to 65 hours a week, which is more manageable than the 60 to 70 she spent as CFO.

Gone are the days, MacCormack says, when CFOs could do what attracted them to the profession in the first place: pore over numbers and help division managers prudently grow their businesses.

Instead, new regulations and other pressures are turning the CFO into the corporate narc, more of a police officer than an accountant.

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http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2005-03-23-cfo-usat_x.htm