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When I last spoke with Frank D’Amelio in July, we talked about his plans to retire at the end of the year from his position of EVP and CFO at Pfizer, Inc., where he was finance chief for 15 years. D’Amelio has served a total of 20 years in CFO roles, and he’s had more than 20 mentees that have gone on to CFO or CEO roles. Yes, 20. Now in his retirement, this month he started serving as “CFO-in-residence” and independent senior advisor for Deloitte’s U.S. CFO Program providing his strategic guidance on the finance function.
I recently chatted with D’Amelio, who shared with me questions to ask yourself and test if you have what it takes to be a CFO.
Have I been properly prepared?
In Part 1 of our series, we talked about what degrees and skill sets a future CFO needs. And that includes leadership DNA, strong financial acumen, and strategic knowledge of industry trends, to name a few.
Can I do the job, and do it well?
“I’m one of those folks that’s never arrogant,” D’Amelio says. “But I’d like to think I have some confidence,” he quipped. You have to be honest with yourself about what you think you can accomplish, he says. It’s also helpful to get feedback from people who’ve followed and supported your career throughout the years.
Do I really want the job?
“Before I became the CFO at Lucent Technologies, I really liked being the president of the business unit,” D’Amelio explains. “When I got asked about taking the CFO job, I had to ask myself, do I want to do this? I hit a fork in the road. Was I going to go back into finance and probably stay in finance? Or am I going to stay on an operational path in senior leadership?” He eventually decided to accept the role. “The CFO job is perpetually demanding,” D’Amelio explains. “And it takes some sacrifice. But, quite frankly, I loved every minute of being a CFO.”
What would be some of the tailwinds and headwinds about the job I’m going into?
When seeking a CFO role at your current company, a few tailwinds include knowing a lot of the people you’ll be working with, and familiarity with the value-drivers and culture of the company, D’Amelio says.
Regarding headwinds, he offered an example of his move from group president at Lucent, an operational role, to the CFO position. No one in the investment community, nor sell-side analysts and portfolio managers knew him, he says. “I only had minimal exposure to the board and very limited exposure to the audit committee,” he explains. “I didn’t have any relationships with the banks or with the rating agencies.” At least he knew the executive leadership team because he grew up at the company, he says. But it took an essential skill set for D’Amelio to face these headwinds. “I think it’s critical that CFOs are really good communicators,” he says.
Also, collaboration across the company and keeping everyone on the same page were important for D’Amelio in his career. “I would just try to connect people to what they were doing every day, how it impacted our guidance, how it impacted our stock price,” he says.
D’Amelio says the CFO role is evolving, but there are some things that stay the same. “If you were to say to me, Frank, pick one key metric when you first made CFO back in 2001,” he says. “And then ask me what one key metric was when I retired as a CFO in 2022, the key metric is still shareholder value. At Pfizer, on my watch, we created about $165 billion of value.”
“Now, would I have liked to have been more technologically fluent when I first started as a CFO?” he says. “Of course, I would’ve. But I eventually did much better [in tech] because of the pandemic.” D’Amelio says CFOs, for sure, have had to become more strategic. “And, I think talent is becoming a more and more critical variable,” he says.
For Part 5, the finale of our series, you’ll hear advice from CFOs from across industries. Forward this email to the aspiring CFOs in your circle—they can sign up for the newsletter here.
See you tomorrow.
Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com
Big deal
Morgan Stanley’s E-Trade released data from its monthly sector rotation study. The top three sectors in December and January were consumer discretionary (nonessential goods and services, like cars and entertainment), information technology, and materials. The results are based on the trading platform’s customer notional net percentage buy/sell behavior for stocks that comprise the S&P 500 sectors. Between December and January, consumer discretionary increased from 7.88% to 11.44%, materials from -2.32% to 8.84%, and information technology from 6.28% to 9.58%.
Going deeper
“There’s a wild theory that the price of Bitcoin is being propped up—and the academic who proved manipulation in 2017 suspects it may be happening again,” is a new Fortune report by Shawn Tully. John Griffin, a finance professor at the University of Texas McCombs School of Business, told Tully that Bitcoin’s sudden stability is “very suspicious.” “The same mechanism we saw in 2017 could be at play now in the still unreal Bitcoin market,” Griffin says.
Leaderboard
Cheryl Wynne was named CFO at Bsquare Corporation (Nasdaq: BSQR), an IT solutions provider, effective Feb. 16. Wynne will succeed Chris Wheaton who is stepping down as CFO and COO. Wynne has served as the corporate controller and senior director of finance at Bsquare since joining the company in November 2020. She began her career at Ernst & Young and then worked at Nordstrom for nearly 10 years in various finance and accounting roles. After Nordstrom, Wynne transitioned to the nonprofit sector, serving as VP of finance and administration at LifeCenter Northwest and, most recently, as CFO at Forterra NW.
Joydeep Goswami was named CFO of Illumina, Inc. (Nasdaq: ILMN), a technology company, effective immediately. Goswami previously served as Illumina’s chief strategy and corporate development officer and interim CFO. Before joining Illumina, he was president of clinical next-generation sequencing and oncology at Thermo Fisher Scientific. While at Thermo Fisher, he also served as president of Asia Pacific and Japan, leading the integration of Life Technologies APJ business into the regional Thermo Fisher organization.
Overheard
“We can now say I think for the first time that the disinflationary process has started,” he told reporters, adding that he expects U.S. economic growth to be positive this year, even if it falls to a “subdued pace.”
—Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell told reporters on Wednesday that inflation is coming down, and he expects U.S. economic growth to be positive this year, even if it falls to a “subdued pace,” Fortune reported. The Fed raised interest rates by 25 basis points on Wednesday, marking the eighth rate hike in under a year.
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