CFO succession in the Mittelstand: six questions to answer before the search starts

Why the old job description is the wrong starting point

A CFO who has served a family business for fifteen years has usually shaped the role around their own strengths: an excellent controller, perhaps, or the owner’s trusted negotiator with the banks. The successor will inherit a job that no longer exists in that form. Before any search, the owners and the advisory board should ask what the company needs the finance function to do in the next five years — not what it did in the last fifteen.

In our CFO mandates in Austria and southern Germany the answer is rarely “the same as before”. It is usually one of: financing growth or a transaction, professionalising reporting for an incoming investor or a larger board, building a finance team that can survive without its head, or taking over IT, legal and HR because the company has outgrown its structure.

Six questions for owners and boards

One: is the CFO a co-managing director with full legal responsibility, or the head of finance reporting to the managing director? The candidate pool differs completely. Two: which functions belong to the role — controlling and accounting only, or also treasury, IT, legal, HR, purchasing? Three: is a transaction, a succession in the shareholder group or a change of financing expected in the next three years? A candidate who has done it once is worth a premium.

Four: how does the CFO work with the owner today, and how should it be tomorrow? Some owners want a sparring partner who says no; others want a reliable executor. Both are legitimate, but a mismatch here ends most CFO tenures early. Five: what is the finance team like — does the new CFO build, restructure or simply lead? Six: what does the package look like compared to what a divisional CFO in a group earns? Mid-sized companies compete for exactly these people.

Where the right CFOs come from

The strongest candidates for a Mittelstand CFO role are usually not sitting in another Mittelstand CFO role. They are the deputy or divisional finance head in a larger family group who wants the full role; the finance director of a foreign group’s Austrian subsidiary who wants to stop reporting to a head office; or the audit or transaction professional in their late thirties who has advised such companies for years and now wants to run one. All of them are employed and not actively looking. They respond to a direct, well-informed approach — and to owners who can articulate the six answers above.

How we run a CFO search

Retained only, with a written briefing that includes the advisory board or bank where relevant. We map the target companies, approach candidates personally and present first qualified profiles within 14 days of the confirmed briefing. Where the decision is close, structured leadership diagnostics add an objective view to the interviews. A placement typically takes three to four months; the outgoing CFO’s notice period usually makes this the right time to start rather than late.

Frequently asked questions

Related pages

• Headhunter for CFO and finance functions
• Leadership diagnostics
• Headhunter in Vienna