This document discusses the roles and responsibilities of a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) as well as potential roadblocks and necessary personal characteristics. It lists numerous stakeholders the CFO must consider and describes common CFO roles such as analyst, treasurer, performance evaluator, business partner, and strategist. Typical roadblocks include an interfering or unfocused CEO, inadequate finance teams, and relationship conflicts. Finally, the document outlines desirable CFO personal traits like being adaptable, inspirational, principled, and team-oriented.

1. What to expect from a CFO?Discussion thought provokers: Who are the stakeholders? CFO roles – building blocks Typical roadblocks CFO personal characteristics Discussion

2. Who are the stakeholders? How do you wish to be perceived by all of these? Chief Executive Headhunters Shareholders Divisional Directors/Peers Analysts Brokers/Advisers Auditors Debt providers Finance & IT Teams External Business Partners NEDs Other Functions Audit Committee Chair Chairman Media

3. CFO Roles: career building blocks? Analyst and chief interpretation officer Treasury/funding ... Chief banking relationship manager Performance evaluator and arbiter Priority setter for the board/business Co-pilot CE and business partner to divisions Business Partner to divisions Presentation external and internal Chief shareholder manager ... Who owns the broker, analyst and investor relationships? Strategist ... and tactician International business

4. CFO Roles: career building blocks? Capital expenditure allocator (Cont’d) Financial control and risk management Tax M & A – lead or support? Team development and management – motivation and leadership Procurement? Cost reduction leader Operational management and troubleshooting Company’s conscience? Publications function

5. CFO RolesPossible discussion topics 1.How does the role of the CFO change if your company becomes financially stressed? 2.How do you handle conflict with your CE? 3.How broad is your role/do you think a CFO’s role should be? 4.How far ahead do CFOs plan their careers? 5.How can CFOs best prepare for their chosen career path?

7. CE who lacks follow through/support

8. Pulling in different directions to CE (or the directors)

9. CE wants the FD to have focus you don’t agree with

10. Audit Committee/Board which won’t listen or act

11. The needs of the business may determine a narrower role for the FD

12. Legacy finance team inadequacies

13. Hiring talent from weakness

14. Turf warfare with divisional directors

15. Relationship with auditors

16. Poor quality information – “I believe/you believe”

17. Downgrading performance expectations

18. External business partners have different agendas

19. Unethical behaviour

20. Finance team corpus – designing and managing dotted lines

22. CFO Personal Characteristics Adaptable/ style flex Inspirational Challenging & Supportive Engaging Consistent Persuasive Tenacious Principled Clear Gravitas Ego-less Human Strategic Commercial Numerate ? Team Orientation Apolitical

23. Personal CharacteristicsPossible Discussion Topics Do you agree with my choice of descriptors? What is ‘gravitas’ and how do you achieve it? What personal characteristics have I forgotten?