Building upon the premise that, under certain conditions, the ability of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) to pressure the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is limited, we develop a measure of CFO resistance that captures the ability of the CFO to resist undue pressure from the CEO to manage earnings. In doing so, we consider various sources of power for both the CEO and CFO, and a market setting where CFO resistance is perceived to be high. We find that firms with resistant CFOs are less likely to engage in earnings management than firms with non-resistant CFOs, ceteris paribus. Additionally, while confirming prior evidence that CEOs with strong incentives are more likely to manage earnings, we show that this effect is significantly less pronounced in the presence of resistant CFOs. Overall, our findings suggest that firms can improve the quality of financial reporting by creating conditions that enable CFO resistance.

This paper examines the extent to which Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) affect corporate cash holding policies. We construct an index (CFO index) that enables us to distinguish between “strong” and “weak” CFOs based on their ability to influence firm outcomes. We find that firms with strong CFOs hold substantially less cash than firms with weak CFOs, ceteris paribus. Importantly, the CFO effect documented in our study goes beyond the effect caused by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) on cash holdings. Our findings provide the first direct empirical evidence that firms with strong CFOs are well positioned to hold less cash due to their relatively weak precautionary motive and superior ability to raise external financing during periods of financial stress. Consistent with an agency explanation, our results also show that strong CFOs fulfill a monitoring role in firms with higher agency costs.