robert S
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CFO, the chief financial officer deals mainly with financial matters such as accounting, investments, cash management etc., in the text book sense.
The CEO, Chief Executive Officer, on the other hand is more difficult to define. That is a position created in contemporary corporate history. Thirty to forty years ago, that used to be President. As corporations grew much larger through mergers and acquisitions, the corporate chart got bigger and bigger with multi divisions and multiple presidents, and they ran out of titles. So they invented the new title CEO.
The CEO's function is not always well defined because there are other people in the corporate structure. Usually, the CEO is above the president but is not always the case. Sometimes he reports directly to the Board. However, when a active and working Chairman of the Board is there, the CEO may report directly to the Chairman. Thus the Chairman takes on the role of the CEO. The bottom line is the classification or the name does not really matters much. It is the function in the organizational chart that matters.
To give you an example, I was a CFO in a good size company ($300 million in sales). I reported directly to the president. So was the vice president of sales. However, everything else reported to me. That included accounting, administration, HR, purchasing, warehousing, delivery, field service, TI and everything else under the sun. The reason, it was a sales driven company and the president devoted most of his energy to sales. Other companies may have a totally different corporate chart and responsibilities depending on their needs. So the title does not really matters in the real sense. |
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