CFO Exits: Domino Effect or Burnout?

They make all the critical budget decisions, and effectively do more to set the corporate agenda, perhaps, than anyone but the CEO. Now, chief financial officers are doing something else: exiting.

As CEO departures continue to break records, new CFOs are joining their ranks. In the first half of 2025, 173 publicly traded firms got new CFOs, on pace to break the single-year record. What’s more, just over a third of CFOs at midmarket firms are considering leaving, a product of CEOs themselves exiting, as well as demographics and burnout. “A lot of long-tenured CFOs are simply stepping out,” says Beau Lambert, a senior client partner in Korn Ferry’s Financial Officer Center of Expertise. Over the past year, Lambert says, Korn Ferry has had a record number of finance-related placements.

To be sure, experts say, the CFO role has never been easy—but for many, the pace since the pandemic has been nonstop. Back in 2020, as COVID-19 upended business operations, numerous CFOs were tasked with finding ways to keep their companies solvent. In the five years since, a cornucopia of crises has followed, with inflation, supply-chain overhauls, tariffs, and AI budgets all making demands on finance departments.

Along with the usual capital-allocation decisions, CFOs these days have a hand in areas like cybersecurity, digital transformation, investor communications, and even procurement. Jeff Constable, co-leader of Korn Ferry’s Global Financial Officers practice, recounts the daily routine of a recently retired CFO. She would get up daily at 4 AM to review sales reports; by 4:30 AM, she would send a note to the board and CEO summarizing the company’s performance. “It is a high-pressure role, and with that comes high turnover,” he says.

More recently, CFOs have become something of a scapegoat for poor corporate performance. If a strategy doesn’t appear to be working, the CEO might replace the CFO—a move that stakeholders inside and outside the organization could view positively. Even when the situation isn’t dire, investor pressure on CFOs has also increased. Because many firms aren’t growing fast organically, activist investors have pushed them to pursue aggressive stock repurchases to significantly boost their profitability. As a consequence, Constable says, CFOs have increased their share repurchases as “a defense mechanism.”

Record CEO departures play a factor as well, in a few ways. In some cases, the old CFO actually becomes the new CEO. Whoever the new boss is, the turnover at the top of corporate finance cascades to roles at lower levels, as new CFOs bring in their own controllers, treasurers, and financial analysts. “Boards and new chiefs are reshaping their finance benches,” Lambert says.

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