A new report released today shows that CEOs earn 2.8 times more than CFOs, although the gap is narrowing.
A new CFO report released by Datarails, titled “CFOs and the C-Suite 2023,” found that CFO compensation is lagging behind that of CEOs, CTOs, and COOs.
Datarails, a financial planning, and analysis (FP&A) platform, analyzed the SEC filings of the largest US-listed companies. The analysis shows that CFOs saw an average pay increase of 1%, in contrast to a 6% decline for CEOs over the same period.
Despite this, CFOs still face tough C-Suite job security, holding the role for an average of just 3.15 years over a five-year period. In particular, 16 publicly traded companies experienced four CFO turnovers over the past five years.
CFOs averaged $3.48 million a year, compared to $3.8 million received by COOs, $3.82 million by CTOs, and $9.74 million by CEOs.
In 2022, the highest-paid CFO in the US was Joe Berchtold of entertainment group LiveNation, who earned $52.4 million. It’s a lucrative year for LiveNation executives, with CEO Michael Rapino becoming the highest-paid executive in the US at $139 million.
In the report, the second-highest paid CFO in 2022 was Michael J. Cavanagh of Comcast (NASDAQ), owned by NBC Universal, with compensation of $41 million.
The report also shows that share prices saw an immediate drop of -1% the day after the CFO‘s departure was announced. Over the next 30 days, these companies faced another -2% decline.
However, after 180 days, stock prices returned to previous levels. This contrasts with the larger stock market losses that companies experience when CEOs leave.
In such cases, there was an average decrease of 1% after 1 day, a decrease of 4% after 30 days, and a more significant decrease of -11% after 180 days.