By Olivia Hart

Thirty-three percent of S&P 500 chief financial officers who changed jobs in 2022 became chief executives, up from 8.8% in 2021, according to Russell Reynolds Associates. The 24.2-percentage-point increase left roughly one in three job-changing finance chiefs reaching the top post, against fewer than one in 10 a year earlier.

The 2022 share was about 3.75 times the 2021 level. The CFO-to-CEO route became materially more visible, but a two-year series cannot establish a durable trend.

What do the 2021 and 2022 figures actually show?

Russell Reynolds counts only CFOs who moved to a new position during the year. It excludes finance chiefs who stayed in role and reports shares rather than head counts.

A higher percentage can reflect more CFO-to-CEO moves, fewer job-changing CFOs overall, or both. The figures cannot separate those effects.

The dataset also cannot distinguish permanent from interim CEO roles, internal transfers from external hires, or subsequent performance. It does not show how often a CFO became interim CEO within the same company.

The series covers 2021 and 2022, with no sector breakdown or stated cause. It therefore cannot establish whether the 2022 surge persisted.

How did Safra Catz reach Oracle’s CEO office?

Safra Catz reached Oracle’s CEO office through an internal climb, not an outside appointment. She joined Oracle as an executive in April 1999 and joined its board in 2001.

She became president in 2004 and co-president and CFO in 2011, reporting to cofounder Larry Ellison. The finance role therefore came after general management, unlike a conventional finance-first path.

When Ellison stepped down, Catz first shared the CEO role with Mark Hurd before becoming sole CEO. Fortune has listed her among business’s most powerful women, and she has served on Disney’s board since 2018.

How did Shou Zi Chew move from investing to TikTok’s top job?

Shou Zi Chew moved from investing to operating roles before becoming TikTok CEO after Kevin Mayer resigned after a few months in the role. He spent two years banking at Goldman Sachs in London, then worked at venture firms including DST Global.

While investing, he led investments in JD.com and Xiaomi. Xiaomi hired him as CFO in 2015, converting an investment relationship into an executive appointment.

He became ByteDance CFO in March 2021, then moved from the parent company’s finance office to lead TikTok. His sequence ran from banking to venture investing, two CFO posts and the subsidiary’s CEO job.

Who bridged TikTok’s leadership gap?

Vanessa Pappas served as TikTok’s interim global head between Mayer’s exit and Chew’s appointment. Her task was to keep the company operating through the leadership transition.

As general manager rather than CFO, Pappas was the only temporary leader in the selection; every other profiled executive held a CFO title. Her case shows that an interim top post did not have to go to the finance chief.

Pappas is Australian and graduated from the University of Queensland in Brisbane. Before TikTok, she worked at Next New Networks and YouTube, both online-video businesses.

In a CNBC interview, Pappas said she saw ways for Walmart to work with TikTok’s newly added e-commerce features. Chew’s appointment then ended the interim period.

Why did Hertz appoint Stephen M. Scheer?

Stephen M. Scheer became Hertz CEO in February 2022 and also sits on its board, placing him over management and corporate governance. He began at Goldman Sachs’ Financial Institutions Group in 1993, advising banks, insurers and asset managers on mergers, acquisitions and capital raising.

He moved into Goldman’s CFO role in 2018 and held it in 2019, when Goldman and Apple launched Apple Card. The consumer-credit launch gave his finance tenure a visible strategic outcome.

For Hertz, fleet funding and used-car values sit close to core economics. A rental company buys and finances vehicles, rents them, then sells them at resale values, making finance leadership directly relevant.

Outside Hertz, Scheer sits on the Jewish Museum and New York Stem Cell Foundation boards. He also belongs to the Business Roundtable, Council on Foreign Relations and U.S. Travel and Tourism Advisory Board.

The museum covers art and culture in Manhattan, while the foundation funds stem-cell research. The Roundtable gathers major-company CEOs; the council focuses on foreign policy; the travel board advises the commerce secretary.

What changed for James von Moltke at Deutsche Bank?

James von Moltke has remained Deutsche Bank CFO since 2017 and added the president title in March 2022, keeping both roles rather than becoming CEO. A Deutsche Bank release said he would remain CFO as his management-board responsibilities changed.

His banking career spans more than 30 years: he started at Credit Suisse First Boston in London in 1992, spent eight years at Citigroup, and reached Deutsche Bank 25 years after his first job. Deutsche was the third bank in that record.

In 2023, he added oversight of Deutsche Bank’s Asset Management unit. His sequence—CFO in 2017, president in 2022, then Asset Management—shows a widening remit inside one bank, not a move to the CEO chair.

What does the expanded CFO role mean for executives?

Rydoo’s CFO Corner describes the modern finance chief as a data interpreter, risk assessor and growth planner, rather than a bookkeeper alone. Number crunching remains part of the work, but no longer defines all of it.

Spotting trends reveals patterns that matter to the business; weighing risk sets exposure limits; planning growth determines where money and effort go. Rydoo also identifies digital transformation as work frequently led by CFOs.

That remit extends beyond reporting to rebuilding how companies operate around newer technology. For boards, the combined record explains why finance leaders increasingly appear in the CEO pipeline, although the two-year data cannot explain the 2022 jump.