Building a competitive finance function
The McKinsey Quarterly: The Online Journal of McKinsey & Co.
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Building a competitive finance function: An executive roundtable By focusing on talent development, new roles for finance, and creative benchmarks, CFOs can deliver a competitive advantage to their companies.
Herbert Pohl
December 2007
CFOs and the finance organizations they head are under intense pressure from the capital markets and activist investors to keep pace with a rapidly changing global market—to go beyond merely crunching numbers and create value on their own. Although finance organizations have a reputation for resisting change, those at world-class companies have made some progress in promoting it.
Such companies require finance professionals to be competitive as well as competent, to lead activities that the finance organization is uniquely suited to direct, and to assume responsibility even for activities that some find uncomfortable, because otherwise those things just won’t get done. Such expectations mean companies must attract and retain the best finance professionals they can—which in turn perpetuates an environment where the finance organization can create more value and do higher-quality work. These are among the perspectives of a panel of experts convened at McKinsey’s 2007 CFO forum in
London. The panelists were Jesper Brandgaard, executive vice president and CFO of Novo Nordisk; John
Connors, a partner at the venture capital firm Ignition Partners and former CFO of Microsoft; Jonathan
Peacock, CFO and chief administrative officer of Novartis Pharmaceuticals; and Helen Weir, group finance director of Lloyds TSB. Herbert Pohl, a partner in McKinsey’s Dubai office, moderated the discussion.
What follows is an edited and abridged version of it.
McKinsey CFO Roundtable 2007
Jesper Brandgaard, executive vice president and CFO of Novo
Nordisk (2000–present), joined the company in 1999 as vice president of corporate finance. He is chairman
Page 1 of 4
Building a competitive finance function: An executive roundtable By focusing on talent development, new roles for finance, and creative benchmarks, CFOs can deliver a competitive advantage to their companies.
Herbert Pohl
December 2007
CFOs and the finance organizations they head are under intense pressure from the capital markets and activist investors to keep pace with a rapidly changing global market—to go beyond merely crunching numbers and create value on their own. Although finance organizations have a reputation for resisting change, those at world-class companies have made some progress in promoting it.
Such companies require finance professionals to be competitive as well as competent, to lead activities that the finance organization is uniquely suited to direct, and to assume responsibility even for activities that some find uncomfortable, because otherwise those things just won’t get done. Such expectations mean companies must attract and retain the best finance professionals they can—which in turn perpetuates an environment where the finance organization can create more value and do higher-quality work. These are among the perspectives of a panel of experts convened at McKinsey’s 2007 CFO forum in
London. The panelists were Jesper Brandgaard, executive vice president and CFO of Novo Nordisk; John
Connors, a partner at the venture capital firm Ignition Partners and former CFO of Microsoft; Jonathan
Peacock, CFO and chief administrative officer of Novartis Pharmaceuticals; and Helen Weir, group finance director of Lloyds TSB. Herbert Pohl, a partner in McKinsey’s Dubai office, moderated the discussion.
What follows is an edited and abridged version of it.
McKinsey CFO Roundtable 2007
Jesper Brandgaard, executive vice president and CFO of Novo
Nordisk (2000–present), joined the company in 1999 as vice president of corporate finance. He is chairman