CFOVILLE

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Would you like to parachute in and help a midmarket company integrate its first acquisition? Or help a publicly held business raise its first long-term debt? Welcome to the world of the interim CFO.

Firms like global talent consultancy ZRG are placing temporary, or interim, CFOs more often. But these aren’t your parents’ interim CFOs—namely, internal seat-warmers snatched from the VP of finance spot to head finance for a short time; they’re experienced finance chiefs from outside the company, brought on temporarily full-time, to handle specific situations.

“Increasingly, more and more over the years, [ZRG]’s clients were asking for interim assistance,” Mark Viner, president of ZRG’s interim solutions and project consulting practice, told CFO Brew.

If ZRG was retained for a CFO search, the client might ask, “Hey, can you provide an interim CFO while you’re doing the search because [the seat] is empty?”

Viner and Shawn Cole, president of Cowen Partners Executive Search, agreed that the business of interim executives in general has become a more accepted and familiar business model in the last several years. And the appointment of CFOs has grown more “episodic,” according to Viner.

“We launched into the interim space five and a half years ago, and I would say the No. 1 subset of the $150 million business we’ve built in interim is placing interim CFOs,” Viner said.

Why bring in an interim CFO, and how a CFO’s career benefits.—DL

      

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THE ECONOMY

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Retail sales climbed 0.2% in June, the US Commerce Department reported last week, a dip from May’s 1% growth.

Notably, retail sales figures measure total dollars spent, so as gas prices fell last month, spending growth also slowed since shoppers were spending less on gasoline, CFO Dive noted. But US shoppers seemed to be avoiding the gas pump as best they could: Sales at gas stations dropped 5.3% in June.

“Falling fuel prices weighed on headline sales data, but a smaller bill at the pump was a source of relief for consumers and provided at least a little more cushion in household spending budgets,” Jim Baird, chief investment officer with Plante Moran financial advisors, wrote in a report, per the Associated Press.

Minus gas spending, overall spending in June climbed 0.7%, and looking away from the gas pump, consumer spending was fairly…resilient (everyone’s favorite word to describe spending). Sales at motor vehicle and parts dealers climbed 1.9%, which the report noted was buoyed by manufacturers’ incentives, while spending at clothing and accessories stores dipped slightly.

Removing dollars spent at the pump provides a different picture of June sales.—NP

      

WORKFORCE TRENDS

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The winner of the return-to-office debate remains…unclear.

More than one-third (35%) of full-time employees worked from home “some or all of the time” in 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, up from 33.4% in 2024. Despite this comeback of sorts, office attendance is still seemingly on the rise.

Total office visits reached a new post-pandemic high last month, hitting 8.5% YoY, according to Placer.AI data. Though, as many companies increased the number of days employees are expected to work in the office, visits were down just 21% from 2019 levels, a slow improvement from 27.2% in June 2025.

“We do continue to see improvement in return-to-office trends. There’s been a lot of debate this year whether or not we’ve hit that new normal, kind of a new equilibrium, whereas other people continue to think we’re going to see more office visits,” R.J. Hottovy, Placer.AI’s head of analytical research, told HR Brew.

Returning to pre-pandemic office attendance levels may never happen, HR Brew reports.—MC

      

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market forces

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top finance reads.

Stat: 3.5x. That’s how much higher the $348.5 billion worth of PE assets stuck in funds 10 years old or older at the end of 2025 were compared to 2015. In fact, that amount is an all-time high for so-called “zombie” funds. (the Wall Street Journal)

Quote: “Our subs are inherently protein-forward.”—Jersey Mike’s, in an S-1 filing. (Business Insider)

Read: Fearing the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, more international students are choosing to study elsewhere, including Germany and Japan. (Bloomberg)

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Jobs

Skip the noise and cut to the jobs that matter. CollabWORK curates openings from top employers and shares them directly in trusted spaces like CFO Brew—click here to see the full list for readers like you.

• Senior Auditor at Servpro Industries, LLC
• Deputy Chief Financial Officer at Port of Seattle
• Staff Accountant at a real estate development organization
• Controller at a manufacturing-focused organization
• Sr. Financial Analyst at an undisclosed organization