‘Long gone are the days where we just provided numbers’: The CFO-to-CEO pipeline is growing but does a finance background always make a good leader?

In Europe, 21% of CEO appointments at the continent’s largest listed companies last year were previously CFOs—second only to divisional chiefs, according to data published by executive search firmSpencer Stuart.

“Long gone are the days where we provided the numbers and asked somebody else to tell the story,” says Darren Ellis, CFO for Europe, Americas, Africa, and the Middle East atStandard Chartered. “The CFO now needs to be able to tell that story.”

Ellis believes that there is now much more crossover between the CFO and CEO role, including setting strategy, allocating capital, steering…