“The Street doesn’t care about accounting functions any longer. They don’t get into the nitty-gritty anymore.”
— Richard Bove, an analyst at Odeon Capital Group LLC, told the Wall Street Journal when asked why accounting expertise seems to be no longer required for the CFO role. According to data from Korn Ferry, only 36% of CFOs in the 1,000 biggest U.S. public companies last year were CPAs—a six-year low.
Our friend Blake Oliver hypothesized on LinkedIn why Wall Street doesn’t care about that anymore:
Could it be that all these new accounting standards aren’t actually making the financial statements more useful to investors?
Maybe? Any other reasons you guys can think of?
Why You Don’t Need to Be an Accountant to Be a CFO [Wall Street Journal]
