“It”™s hard to be a CFO,” Robert J. Chersi, a Pace University faculty member and former corporate CFO, told a White Plains audience at the first CFO of the Year Awards ceremony recently presented by the Westchester County Business Journal.
The job has grown in the last 10 to 15 years, said Chersi, a former CFO at Fidelity Investments and in the U.S. wealth management division of UBS AG. That growth is in part due to the federal Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which set new requirements for financial accounting and reporting by public companies and imposed greater regulatory oversight and stiff penalties for violators. CFOs also “carried” many of their companies through the Great Recession, Chersi said.
It takes more than a person good with numbers to fill the role of a corporate CFO today, which has evolved, said Chersi, to “a position of leadership within the corporation.”
Yet the CFO”™s expanded and demanding duties hardly attract public notice or inspire popular culture. “Any action heroes modeled after CFOs?” Chersi asked his audience, which erupted in laughter.
Though their office feats are more the stuff of ledgers than superhero legends, 11 CFOs at businesses and nonprofits in Westchester County were finalists this year for the inaugural Business Journal awards, which were co-sponsored by McGladrey and TD Bank. Of those, three winners were honored who represent large, mid-size and small businesses.
“This is not a popularity contest,” Dee DelBello, CEO of Westfair Communications Inc. and publisher of the Business Journal, told the crowd gathered at the Mapleton at Good Counsel. “This is based on merit and is judged impartially.”
CFO of the Year winners were: large business, Murray A. Goldberg, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. in Greenburgh; mid-size business, Gabriele Giudici, Heineken USA Inc. in White Plains; small business, Christopher Jones, Durante Rentals in Mount Vernon.
Nearing retirement in 2014, Goldberg this month stepped down as CFO at Regeneron, a post he held for 18 years, and continues with the state”™s largest biotechnology employer as senior vice president for administration.
Goldberg when accepting his award recalled Regeneron”™s humble beginnings in Westchester, where it is headquartered on the Landmark at Eastview life sciences campus, and its slow road to success and recognition as one of the fastest-growing and shareholder-enriching biotech companies in the world.
Regeneron, which has marketed three drug products and has another dozen in development, had its first profitable year in 2012, Goldberg said, and this year was added to the S&P 500 stock market index.
The longtime CFO quoted Dr. Leonard Schleifer, Regeneron”™s founding president and CEO: “Twenty-five years later, we”™re an overnight success.”
“Part of the reason that I”™m up here,” said Goldberg, “is the billion and a half dollars that we raised to reach that position.”
Goldberg”™s company in nominating him credited his adroit management of cash flow and skill in raising more than $1 billion in capital through numerous public and private offerings of debt and equity securities and collaborations with pharmaceutical companies. He played a vital role in putting together and managing Regeneron”™s 6-year-old strategic partnership with Sanofi, the Paris-based pharmaceutical giant.
Named top CFO in the mid-sized business category, Gabriele Giudici, a native of Italy, joined Heineken USA in White Plains in 2010 after holding several other finance and marketing positions at Netherlands-based Heineken in a 17-year international career.
Colleagues in White Plains said he has improved key financial processes and established a revenue management team to drive top-line growth for the upscale beer company.
Named the year”™s top CFO for small businesses, Christopher Jones with two business partners has grown Durante Rentals from a three-person operation to a company with 33 employees at three locations in Mount Vernon, the Bronx and Queens. It is the largest independently owned rental business in the five boroughs.
Jones in 2009 co-founded the construction equipment rental company with John and Anthony Durante. Jones and John Durante first met in 2006 at the Business Council of Westchester”™s 40 Under 40 Rising Stars ceremony, where both received awards.
Jones was 22 when he started his first company, Progressive Solutions Inc., an accounting service firm for small businesses in New Jersey. He later raised several million dollars in venture capital for early stage technology and new media companies in New York City.
Judges for the CFO awards were Chersi; Michael Gillan, associate vice president at Fordham Westchester; Andi Gray, Business Journal columnist and founder of the business consulting firm Strategy Leaders Inc., and William M. Mooney Jr., president of the Westchester County Association.
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