Matinee movies, random woodworking projects, and sipping ice cold beverages beachside. Dream vacation, or a day in the life of a CFO?

Increasingly, there might not be much of a difference: CFO retirements are markedly on the rise.

Globally, 60% of outgoing CFOs at companies in major stock indices either retired or moved to the board in Q1 2026, significantly above the seven-year Q1 average of 39%, according to the latest CFO Turnover Index from leadership advisory firm Russell Reynolds Associates.

We’re at an interesting point for turnover overall: CFO appointments at those publicly held companies dipped for the first time since Q1 2022, falling from a high of 5.2% in Q1 2025 to 4.9% for the same quarter in 2026.

“It’s the first quarterly decline, but it’s very minor, and it’s still pretty significantly elevated against the seven-year trend,” Linda Barham, Russell Reynolds’s financial officers practice Americas leader, told us, adding that “a lot of the impetus and the catalyst behind [activity] actually haven’t changed, and so we’re still sitting at a very significant high, even across the last seven years.”

Things get interesting, however, when you dig a little deeper into the side effects we may increasingly see as a result of the retirement stats: As the supply of experienced CFO candidates shrinks, the demand for experienced CFOs is growing, potentially creating an intriguing supply and demand dilemma in the future.

Search committees may have to work overtime.—NP

The annual Baruch College Financial Reporting Conference in New York is probably the nerdiest conference for accountants and CFOs that we know of, or would dare to attend. But it’s also a great place to hear from the people behind the lettered government agencies about their priorities for the year. And this year’s event on May 7 didn’t disappoint.

While we hope to scatter more of what we learned throughout our coverage this year, here are three things we heard that you’ll want to know.

Cash questions. When is a cash equivalent not a cash equivalent? Digital assets on company balance sheets have given rise to a new issue in US accounting standards. In some cases, a digital asset qualifies as a cash equivalent, the Financial Accounting Standard Boards has said, at least preliminarily.

To understand if a company’s digital asset meets the mark, though, FASB is going to require more details about all issuers’ “cash equivalent” line on balance sheets, whether or not a company holds assets like Bitcoin or stablecoins.

On a panel at the Baruch conference, Jackson Day, technical director of FASB, urged the accountants and other finance executives in attendance to pay attention to this upcoming change: “If you have cash equivalents, you’re going to have new disclosures under this proposal.”

Also watch out for the new income statement expenses rule.—VR

For cybersecurity professionals, nothing builds character like a high-stakes security incident.

Cybersecurity pros are increasingly putting their trust in leaders with security mishaps under their belts. According to a May ISC2 research report, 76% of cybersecurity professionals either somewhat or strongly agree that a leader’s credibility increases when they have previously been through a “real, high-profile security incident.” The findings are based on an April survey that queried close to 800 cybersecurity professionals.

It’s a new dawn. It’s a new day. The recent research hints at a drift away from the stigma surrounding cybersecurity leaders whose organizations are successfully hit by cyberattacks. Just a year ago, a Sophos report found that 25% of leadership teams were replaced following ransomware attacks. IT Brew has reported on some of the challenges security leaders face following a cyber-calamity.

“Businesses are really cognizant of how much impact an incident can have, and therefore want trusted leaders that have experience in incident management and dealing with such things,” ISC2 CISO Jon France told IT Brew in an interview.

Why hire a cybersecurity leader who’s been through an incident?—BM

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.