CEOs need a CFO who can help management confidently take new, calculated risks and strategize ways to grow the business.
A CFO needs to be more than a beancounter. I still see companies hiring beancounters, may are great beancounters and accountants, but have little experience and exposure to working with the CEO to help navigate the right course for growth and balancing the risks and rewards inherent with various initiatives.
This article from CFO.com is enlightening. I look forward to your comments and feedback.
A disorderly exit by the U.K. from the European Union could wipe as much as $1.6 trillion from future mergers and acquisitions, a new study says.
The uncertainty created by the U.K. June 23 vote to leave the European Union has already had an impact. Global M&A so far this year is down 16 percent to $1.5 trillion from the same period in 2016, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Stock market sales have declined 63 percent over the same period to $206 billion, the data show.
Yet it isn’t all gloom and doom. In the month since the U.K.’s referendum, about $103 billion in deals involving European companies have been announced — including SoftBank Group Corp.’s $32 billion bid for Cambridge, England-based ARM Holdings Plc and Paris-based Danone’s agreement to buy WhiteWave Foods Co. — according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
“In the last few days we have seen evidence that the M&A market in the U.K. won’t come to a crashing halt even if it won’t be at its previous pace,” said Tim Gee, London merger partner at Baker & McKenzie. “London will also retain a remarkable concentration of financial, legal and economic talent.”
The impact of Brexit won’t lead to a global “Lehman moment,” and the study’s central scenario shows global merger activity “only modestly down for the next two years before fully recovering,” the report said.
In a similar report in 2015, Baker & McKenzie forecast that fallout from a Greek exit from the euro could wipe as much as $1.4 trillion from future M&A.
Under the more adverse scenario, Monday’s study forecast a significant slowdown in Euro-zone growth and a 40 percent drop in mergers in the region, excluding the U.K., in 2017, compared with if the country had voted remain.
We all know the challenges in setting up and running a business in India. Though the country, its demographics and the market size remain big attractions, setting up a business, making profits and building a sustainable business is not easy! As a matter of fact, I keep commenting to overseas clients that making in India is not easy, unless you are doing a different kind of business, which is another story.
What is also a bigger challenge is shutting down a business, if it does not work or fails. The sheer process has been extremely painful, and hopefully, the new Insolvency & Bankruptcy law will make it easier. India has traditionally and culturally not been open to accepting failures; but that is changing!
In this context, I read an interesting article in Business Today, “Commercially Sustainable Bankruptcy” that I wanted to share. It details the challenges that honest, ethical businesses today have if they have to close shop or if they miss certain regulatory commitments.
CFO - The Chief Financial Officer - More than a beancounter 