The Essential CFO: A Corporate Finance Playbook

Acknowledgments

DURING MY CAREER AS AN investment banker and corporate executive, I was privileged to know many outstanding chief financial officers. It is their collected wisdom that is reflected in this book.

In particular, I want to call out the members of the CFO Roundtable—a group sponsored by the Center for Corporate Innovation—who shared their insights and best practices during our rich discussions of corporate finance topics.

I also have been fortunate to have had many outstanding mentors and bosses. While the list of my benefactors is long, I especially want to acknowledge Darwin Smith and Don Hibbert of Kimberly-Clark, Mike Critelli of Pitney Bowes, Don Layton of E*Trade Financial, and Steve Hardis of Marsh & McLennan.

For helping with this book, I must start with a thank you to my sons, Michael and Nathan, who assisted their technologically challenged father in navigating Word and PowerPoint and gathered financial statistics from Bloomberg, where Nathan was a summer intern.

In addition, I want to thank Yuk Ping Ng, Alan Bieler, and Scott Gilbert for reviewing certain chapters.

Finally, I want to acknowledge Sheck Cho of John Wiley & Sons, who took a chance on a neophyte author and provided steady guidance.