Compensation Watch ’19: CFOs

Posted on by Jason Bramwell

Some of you grinding away in public accounting might have “champagne wishes and caviar dreams” of being a CFO one day. So, let’s see how well that job pays these days, courtesy of three accounting and finance salary guides that have been released in the past six months.

Randstad

Randstad organizes executive titles in its salary guide by interquartile ranges across three levels of company revenue: small ($50 million), mid ($100 million), and large ($250 million or more). Here’s its 2019 salary projection for CFOs:

  • Small: $170,990 – $305,618
  • Mid: $193,311 – $345,514
  • Large: $228,874 – $409,077

Robert Half

Robert Half reported starting pay ranges by four percentiles in its salary guide: 25th (newbies), 50th (average experience), 75th (above-average experience), and 95th (significant experience and expertise).

Salary figures represent the national averages. Bonuses, benefits, and other forms of compensation aren’t factored into the starting salary ranges, according to the guide.

Here’s Bob Half’s 2019 salary projection for CFOs:

  • 25th: $121,250
  • 50th: $196,750
  • 75th: $239,250
  • 95th: $497,250

Accounting Principals

If you’re looking for salaries and total cash compensation figures, Accounting Principals’ salary guide has you covered. The data in the guide is broken into three categories: average base salary by company size (small, medium, and large; base salary (low, high, and average); and total cash compensation (low, high, and average). Here’s its salary projections in each of the three categories:

Base salary by company size

  • Small: $226,637
  • Medium: $287,404
  • Large: $471,511

Base salary

  • Low: $201,254
  • High: $580,610
  • Average: $375,291

Total cash compensation

  • Low: $251,708
  • High: $1,066,705
  • Average: $545,296

Honestly, I would have expected these salary ranges to be higher. They actually seem on par (maybe a little higher) with a public accounting firm partner. But, seriously, who wants to work in public accounting their whole career?

Related Posts

CFOs Want Tech Investments to Pay Off…Stat!

This story is republished from CFOZone, where you’ll find news, analysis and professional networking tools for finance executives.

CFOs and CIOs have very different priorities when it comes to IT spending, and that dichotomy is not likely to change any time soon, even as IT budgets are starting to once again increase.

After being slashed to almost nil during the height of the crisis for many corporations across sector and size, IT budgets are beginning to rise.

But CFOs are keeping a keen eye on where that money is going and still expect a relatively swift return on investment (ROI) in order to consider anything beyond maintenance and upgrades.


They want to clearly see that ROI—whether it be through qualitative measures, like better compliance or improved risk management, or through quantitative measures like reductions in days sales outstanding (DSO) or decreased cost-per-check.

As Craig Himmelberger at SAP said in a recent interview I did for Global Finance magazine: “People don’t want to rip and replace systems that are still functioning well, so a lot of the investments we see now are incremental.”

This IT budget allocation is likely to continue for the near future, at any rate, regardless of what CIOs may want. However, there does have to be a balance. At some point when liquidity risk fears begin to subside, CFOs will once again be more open to their CIOs’ suggestions for IT spending.

And what CIOs want to see is more spend on innovation, as Ellen Pearlman noted in her blog on CIOZone.com last month.

She quoted CXO Art Sedighi as saying: “In the current time and environment, the biggest challenge is [to] convince upper management to open up their wallets again after almost 3 years. The IT staff has been pulling things together with nothing short of band-aids since 2008, and things are about [to] fall apart. All management sees is the fact that spending was down, and they survived.”

Pearlman points out that while most execs believe that IT innovation is important, companies have consistently slashed spend on innovation over the past decade. In an AT Kearney study, executives cited IT innovation spend of 30 percent in 1999, compared with just 14 percent by 2009.

In the study, 45 percent of IT budget went to improving operations and 41 percent went to business enablement/process improvement. Most respondents felt that 24 percent of the IT budget should be directed towards innovation.

The current budget split certainly meshes with the continued corporate focus on driving down costs across the working capital chain. Indeed, it may be quite some time before CIOs get their dream IT allocation.

SEC Wins Backdating Case Against Former Maxim CFO

This story is republished from CFOZone, where you’ll find news, analysis and professional networking tools for finance executives.

The SEC, under attack last week for its Goldman lawsuit and porn allegations, late Friday finally had a victory to celebrate.

Carl Jasper, the former chief financial officer of Maxim Integrated Products was found liable for securities fraud in a stock-option backdating lawsuit filed by the SEC’s San Francisco office, according to Bloomberg.

Carl Jasper, the former chief financial officer of Maxim Integrated Products was found liable for securiti option backdating lawsuit filed by the SEC’s San Francisco office, according to Bloomberg.

It was a rare civil jury trial involving backdating allegations.

Even rarer, it was the second backdating case decided in a court in one week.

Earlier in the week the former CEO of KB Home was convicted of four felony counts in a criminal stock option backdating case.

In the Jasper case, the former finance executive of the maker of chips for laptop computers was found liable on eight out of 11 counts, and cleared him on three, according to The Recorder. Bloomberg said he was found liable for fraud, lying to auditors, and aiding Maxim’s failure to maintain accurate books and records.

“We are pleased that a jury sitting in the heart of Silicon Valley recognized that stock-option backdating is, in fact, a fraudulent practice that matters to investors, and that Mr. Jasper, as the CFO of a public company, was ultimately responsible for misleading investors about the accuracy of Maxim’s financial reports,” Mark Fickes, trial counsel for the SEC, told the wire service in an e-mail statement after the eight-day trial.

Jasper’s lawyer, Steven Bauer, told Bloomberg in an e-mail he will ask the judge to overrule the jury verdict at a May 24 hearing. “Carl Jasper is a good man who never intended to do anything wrong,” he reportedly said. “This is the first step in a long road, and we are confident that in the end he will prevail.”

In late 2007, the SEC filed civil charges against Maxim, Jasper and former chief executive officer John F. Gifford, alleging that they reported false financial information to investors by improperly backdating stock option grants to Maxim employees and directors.

The Commission alleged that Jasper helped the company fraudulently conceal tens of millions of dollars in compensation expenses through the use of backdated, “in-the-money” option grants.

In a separate action, Gifford agreed to pay more than $800,000 in disgorgement, interest, and penalties to settle charges relating to his role in the options backdating.

Maxim, without admitting or denying the Commission’s allegations, consented to a permanent injunction against violations of the antifraud and other provisions of the federal securities laws.

The Commission’s complaints also alleged that Jasper was aware of the improper backdating practices, drafted backdated grant approval documents for Maxim’s CEO to sign, and disregarded instructions from CEO Gifford to record an expense in connection with certain backdated options. According to the Commission, Gifford should have known that the company was not reporting expenses for those in-the-money stock options and instead was falsely reporting that they were granted at fair market value.

According to The Recorder, in his opening statement at the trial, Bauer said Gifford, who is now deceased, was to blame for the backdating and not Jasper.”You can’t talk about options at Maxim without talking about Mr. Gifford,” Bauer reportedly told the court. “You can’t talk about picking dates without talking about Mr. Gifford.”

The SEC is seeking injunctive relief, disgorgement of wrongful profits, a civil penalty, and an order barring Jasper from acting as an officer or director of a public company.

Early last week, Bruce Karatz, the former CEO of KB Home was convicted of four felony counts in a stock option backdating case. He was found guilty of two counts of mail fraud, one count of lying to company accountants and one count of making false statements in reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to published reports.

He was acquitted on 16 other counts, including mail and wire fraud, securities fraud and filing false proxy statements, according to Bloomberg.

He faces up to 60 years in prison when he is sentenced.

Starwood Hotels CFO Not in Denial About This Egypt Situation

Frankly, it’s bad for business:

“The political turmoil in North Africa, especially Egypt, is of course hurting our business,” said Vasant Prabhu, vice chairman and chief financial officer of the hotelier during a post-earnings conference call Thursday. He noted Starwood has 16 hotels across North Africa that generated between $10 million to $12 million in fees last year.

“We expect that our fees will be hit in North Africa,” he added. “It is too early to tell how we will be impacted, but this is clearly a risk that needs to be closely monitored.”