CFO DIVE Asks Cowen Partners About Macy’s New CFO
Some experts said the responsibility and repercussions for such accounting missteps typically lies within a CFO’s purview and could have led to the leadership change, but Macy’s said there was no connection.
“While we don’t discuss business rationale regarding any leadership transition or change, this decision is not related to the accounting issue. We have been transparent and our disclosures are complete,” the company said in statement emailed to CFO Dive.
But Ed Ketz, an associate professor of accounting at Penn State University, said it is likely that the board would have been under pressure to change the CFO leadership, noting that waiting several months to take an action could have had benefits as a more positive messaging strategy.
“If much sooner, Macy’s would be practically admitting an error,” Ketz said in an email. “This far apart one can provide alternative explanations.”
Shawn Cole, president of executive search firm Cowen Partners, also said financial chiefs typically face consequences for such mistakes.
“The unfortunate reality of being CFO is that once the mistake was found, the board had to act as he [Mitchell] was ultimately responsible for overseeing and controlling such errors,” Cole wrote in an email.
Cole believes that Macy’s publicly pinned the blame on a low-level accountant to frame the problem as a smaller isolated incident, buying some time to find a new finance chief and “avoiding the immediate need for Mitchell to resign,” he wrote in an email.
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About Shawn Cole, President & Cofounder
Shawn Cole is a serial entrepreneur and executive leader with over 15 years’ experience founding and running successful companies. Shawn’s business career has been centered on value creation for both turnarounds and startups.
Shawn is President and Co-Founder of Cowen Partners, a national CFO executive search firm focused on the key elements of a successful business: sales, marketing, and finance. Business clients across the country trust Cowen Partners to take their companies to the next level by finding them executive talent, such as a CEO, CFO, COO, Chief Revenue Officer, and Chief Marketing Officer. Clients are both small and large, publicly traded, pre-IPO, private, and non-profit organizations, typically $50 million to multi-billion dollar revenue Fortune 1000 companies or have assets between $1 billion and $15 billion.
An active participant in the business community and startup space, Shawn Co-Chairs The Cowen Partners Venture Fund which provides seed funding and early stage investments, focusing on market disruptors in niche markets, community businesses, and minority entrepreneurs.
Shawn attended Oregon State University’s College of Business Austin Entrepreneurship Program and participated in a first-of-its-kind experiential entrepreneurship experiment at Weatherford Hall. He was also a Founding Member and President of Oregon State University’s Students in Free Enterprise, an international non-profit organization working with university students who want to positively change their communities and learn practical knowledge to become socially responsible business leaders.
At the age of 16 Shawn became a volunteer firefighter and EMT, eventually founding and managing a half marathon to raise funds for the community. To date, the marathon is still a success and has raised over one million dollars benefiting the community.
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