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50 essays on this topic.
On 31 December 1999, Citigroup stood as the colossus, while JPMorgan trailed as the also-ran. $10,000 invested in each, with dividends reinvested, has grown to $131,000 and $5,300 today. The gap comes from arithmetic and from decisions taken in the good years…
More than 80% of businesses across industry-agnostic software segments now screen as having a weak vertical moat. A moat’s value depends entirely on what competitors cannot rent, and anybody can now rent reasoning by the token.
In March a company spent an average of $1.15 per million AI tokens. By September it paid 68 cents. Every budgeting process I know assumes input costs rise each year, and this input keeps falling in price.
A chip supplier is discussing anchoring its own customer's $100bn listing. When that supplier finances the customer, some revenue represents its own money flowing back, and revenue no longer provides independent evidence of demand.
Reviewing a piece of AI work costs $86, compared with $361 to do it yourself. It looks like a saving of three-quarters, and it is, but that $86 is priced in expert hours and has stayed the same even as the cost of generating the work has dropped a thousandfold.
Most CFOs now rank cutting costs and funding growth among their top priorities — simultaneously. That's not indecision; it's the new shape of the job. The problem is that almost every budget process is built for one hand only.
Most firms have quietly acquired a critical supplier they don't manage — for the most important input they buy: thinking. Procurement solved this problem decades ago. It's time to apply the discipline to cognition.
Finance is built on the premise that an answer is either right or wrong. The business it reports on has never worked that way — which is why the habit of updating cleanly is a CFO's real advantage.
'Culture eats strategy for breakfast' gets quoted but rarely designed for. Culture isn't the enemy of a good plan — it's the container the plan has to live in, and when the two don't fit, the container wins every time.
A firm can now rent increments of thinking — bounded units of cognitive work, metered and priced like compute. That sounds like a pricing detail. It isn't. It changes what the cost structure of a firm is made of.
Most CFOs are trained to make the balance sheet efficient. Buffett spent his career arguing the opposite — that its first job is to be unkillable, and that the reward for building it that way is the freedom to act when no one else can…
The question CFOs get asked at almost every Q4 board now: what are we doing about the buyback? Buffett's 2011 and 2016 letters give the hard answer most boardroom conversations skip…
For forty years Warren Buffett has been making the same quiet argument about the CFO function. Most CFOs still haven't fully internalised it — and the cost of not internalising it compounds…
The next great finance hire may not look like a traditional finance hire at all. Finance is shifting from a processing engine to a decision engine, and the talent stack has to follow…
There’s a massive, hidden advantage to the fact that Finance has been the "under-invested child" of the fintech world for the last decade.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I've come to believe there are really only two types of financial leadership — and the difference between them isn't talent or in…
A 10-part series — 8 parts on this topic
Over the last 25 years in finance - more recently as CFO - one thing has become clear to me:
Example: A CFO saying, “I believe our company should diversify into crypto trading.” That’s a view.
Two months ago, I posted an article, on what I thought were the 10 commandments of FP&A story telling. It was born out of the some of my past frustrations of working with FP&A p…
In November 2023, I had posted an article about a storytelling cheat sheet for CFOs. This artcile is a continuation of that post, but targetted towards juniour FP&A professional…
Being a CFO in fintech sounds cool—until it’s 2:47am and you're wide awake, wondering if your fraud controls holds, your Series C runway will stretch, or your compliance stack i…
Ill thought tariffs, and unthought taxes are squeezing margins. Populist political agendas are resulting in unwanted (and shall I say unnecessary) challenges to the fragile busi…
Strategic planning and strategic preparation, while closely related, offer distinct approaches to achieving organizational success. For a CFO, understanding the nuances between…
As we approach the close of 2024, I find myself revisiting the series of articles I’ve shared here on LinkedIn over the past twelve months. When I began posting about a year ago…
I often find myself reflecting on how companies, teams, and even individuals measure success. In my opinion there are three distinct approaches : output focus, outcome focus, an…
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are often seen as a fast track to growth, innovation, and market expansion. With what is possibly the beginning of interest rate cuts on both side…
In November 2023, I had written a post explaining why storytelling is a CFO’s secret superpower. Having seen firsthand how compelling narratives can transform dry numbers into i…
The role of a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is evolving and leveraging technology has become even more important to create value. After all, how good can a CFO be if they can't…
Today, I'm writing about a topic that marries the ancient wisdom of collective decision-making with the cutting-edge challenges faced by modern CFOs. Inspired by the recent re-r…
In the heart of Vietnam War history lies a powerful lesson on resilience and faith, known today as the Stockdale Paradox. This concept was named after Admiral James Stockdale, w…
This week , I am departing from writing about something topical, but rather expressing a \strong\ point of view on why Treasurers should be considered as top candidates for CFO…
The allocation of funds towards brand investments, especially in sports sponsorship, stands out as a significant decision, especially for small companies. For CFOs, the challeng…
In today's fiercely competitive business landscape, customer experience can significantly influence a company's reputation and, ultimately, its financial health. While often ove…
Generally, finance is a world of numbers, graphs, and cold, hard data. Nevertheless, behind the world of spreadsheets and financial models, there is a very human sea of emotions…
As we stand on the brink of another year-end, I find myself musing humorously over a question that's more philosophical than financial: Why do we move forwards in time and not b…
As a CFO, my perspective on business strategy has always been grounded in the principle of focus. In a competitive marketplace, companies often face the temptation to diversify…
In the world of finance, numbers reign supreme. But what happens when the CFO decides to take a page out of a storyteller's book? Magic. Here are ten compelling reasons why the…
In the grand symphony of corporate management, the perennial debate between strategy and culture often takes center stage. As CFOs, while we may be inclined to lean towards stra…
As CFOs, we are often likened to navigators steering through the treacherous waters of corporate finance, where the twin beacons of growth and cash flow guide our journey. The p…
CFOs can harness the capabilities of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to create value in several distinct ways. In essence, the com…
It’s more than a year since I posted on LinkedIn about the 10 commandments for the newbie CFO. It got over 4,000 impressions (number of times the post was displayed on a screen)…
1. Thou shalt help the Board in setting (& execution of) of corporate strategy.