VideoThis year nearly 2,400 public-company CFOs are expected to leave their current jobs. Most will move on to other finance positions, often at larger companies. A few (think Indra Nooyi at PepsiCo) will move into the coveted corner office. But a growing number of CFOs will wave an emphatic goodbye to corporate life altogether and instead launch themselves into a wide variety of other pursuits. While the CFO post is undeniably a pressure-cooker, it can also be an incubator: executives acquire a broad range of skills, experiences, and contacts that leave them well prepared to indulge their passions and interests. They can strike out in new directions even as they leverage the finance savvy they've spent many years developing. Some will become independent directors, others will explore opportunities in the private-equity/venture-capital space, still others will take the "left to pursue other interests" boilerplate to heart — and actually pursue the dreams they feel they've put off for far too long.
The reasons for the exodus are multifold: increased regulation, corporate politics, a desire to more fully embrace the spirit of casual Friday. The destinations are also diverse. After all, CFO pay being what it is (see "Pay Up"), many finance chiefs can walk away from the job and live quite comfortably, thank you. They can often come back whenever they want — or need — to. Ken Yamamoto, for example, left the CFO post at Gartner to run a cleaning enterprise in Georgia; he has since returned as treasurer of Affinion Group. Longtime CFO Ellen Richstone ran a specialty consulting business leveraging C-suite executives, but was enticed back to the CFO post at Sonus Networks after two years.
On the following pages, you'll meet 11 former CFOs who have closed the door on finance — at least for now. What's true for all is that their finance careers have given them a foundation for their new endeavors, whether it's running restaurants, teaching the next generation of finance executives, helping to manage a renowned charitable organization, or writing the Great American Novel. Most of these CFOs recall their business careers fondly, but seem decidedly more excited to talk about their current pursuits. Not that they regret their former jobs. As one career-changer notes, "When you're a CFO, you can pretty much do anything."
Become a Restaurateur
To those who know her, Susan Frasca has simply fulfilled
her childhood dream. Even as a nine-year-old, she whipped up
crepes and Baked Alaska in her family's kitchen. "My mom used to
think I would be a cook when I grew up," she remembers.
Instead she became an accountant, capping her career in finance with the CFO post at Restaurants-America, which owns 45 upscale restaurants nationwide.
Then, nine years ago, she traded in her calculator for a chef's knife. Frasca secured a 100 percent-funded nonrecourse loan and took over four of the group's restaurants. "When you're a CFO, you can pretty much do anything," she says. "A business is a business regardless of industry."
After changing both the staffs and the menu selections, as well as sharpening her wine and culinary tastes, Frasca has made two of the original four (Kinzie Chophouse and Mambo Grill) quite profitable. In fact, Kinzie Chophouse grew 40 percent in its first year under her management. Today, those restaurants are worth $5.5 million, more than double their $2.3 million value before she stepped in.
"Running a restaurant is very similar to finance," she says. "You have to have a business plan, and then you follow a science." In this case, that meant adding prized family recipes to the menus, and tweaking them just enough so they would cook quickly in large volumes and satisfy varying palates. At the Kinzie Chophouse, for example, the apple pancetta salad features a dressing straight from her grandmother's cookbook, with one minor change: it's served with a pastry puff in place of the traditional Italian bread.
Frasca's success rate is running at 50 percent — not bad when you consider that 90 percent of restaurants fail. She sold one restaurant in 2000 when it failed to reach her expectations. "I kept wanting to fix it, and spent too much of my time there," she explains. When a similar situation materialized with a second restaurant, Frasca reacted much more quickly and closed the facility in October 2003. "I learned when to stop fixing and just get out," she says.
Despite long hours and a hectic pace, owning restaurants has its advantages. For one, Frasca has been able to combine business with pleasure by becoming a certified sommelier. Then, of course, there's the fact that she can have her favorite meals — the New York strip steak at Kinzie Chophouse, for instance — prepared the way she likes whenever she wants. Sometimes, she says, "it's great to be your own boss." — Laura DeMars
Teach the Next Generation
Call it serendipity. The day after Christopher B. Paisley, the former CFO of 3Com, said in a press release that
he would be retiring at the end of the year and hoped to teach, he got a call from Santa Clara (California) University. Six
months later, he became the Dean's Executive Professor of Accounting and Finance at the Leavey School of Business.
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