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Normally it’s the holidays that sneak up on us, but this December, 2025 feels like it’s already here. Massive changes in store for taxes, tariffs, and regulations are pulling our minds forward like Jupiter’s gravity on a doomed little comet.
But let’s not hurtle forward without a little perspective on the year that was. Here are some of the biggest storylines of 2024 as we saw it at CFO Brew.
At any rate. Let’s get this one out of the way: We spent, perhaps, an inordinate share of 2024 hanging on the every word of Fed Chair Jay Powell and his fellow members of the Federal Open Market Committee, watching for hints about the magic moment when they’d cut the benchmark interest rate for the first time since March 2020.
The Fed took the plunge in September with a half-point cut that some members believed was too much juice. Its more modest quarter-point cut in November was announced the same week that Donald Trump won reelection. The returning president’s economic policies have enough inflationary potential that many expect the Fed to become even more cautious about future cuts.
Talent pool running dry. The accountant shortage remained top of mind in 2024, and there were even signs that it got worse.
This year, EY described the deficit of tax and accounting professionals as “approaching crisis levels” and 83% of senior finance leaders told the CFO Pulse survey that there was a shortage, a 13-percentage point jump from 2022. Overloaded staff are more stressed and, per a Gartner survey, they make more mistakes. But we’re not here to bum you out: We also covered ways finance departments can fill the gaps, and shared one of the leading minds in the profession’s thoughts on how to increase the pipeline.
Pricing games. As inflation continued to ease and purchasing power recovered, finance teams recalculated their customers’ appetites for price increases. Some were able to pull off more hikes, even though consumers were clearly fed up with the cumulative impact of inflation.
Others, including Target and McDonald’s, tried to bring back lower-income customers with price cuts and value meals. But lower prices haven’t worked miracles for either company: Both have suffered despite their discounting, and Target has even lost some wealthier customers to Walmart. Will the “lingering softness in customer demand” persist well into 2025?