By Avishek Banerjee, BW Businessworld
The main duties of a midfielder are to maintain possession of the ball, taking the ball from defenders and feeding it to the strikers, as well as dispossessing opposing players And Ravi feels it is the same way a CFO has to makes his own making his own attacks and defenses.
It is a known fact that midfielders, in the game of football, are critical players whose position of play is midway between the attacking forwards and the defenders. In a modern-day corporate world, the role of a Chief Financial Officer, whose key duties include tracking cash flow and financial planning as well as analyzing the company’s financial strengths and weaknesses and proposing corrective actions, is being considered quite analogous to the job of a soccer midfielder. This was affirmed by Sethurathnam Ravi, Former Chairman of BSE India and Managing Partner at Ravi Rajan & Co., who was making a keynote address at the 5th Edition of the CFO and Finance Strategy Awards 2021, organized by BW CFO World and BW Businessworld.
While addressing the occasion on a virtual summit Ravi said, “The Indian ecosystem is a very complex ecosystem as far as Indian businesses are concerned, and the CFO’s role has become very important considering the complexities that are there. For example, any company has to go through multiple regulators such as RBI, MCA, IRDA, SEBI, PFRDA. So, a CFO’s role is very important in the journey of a company. Giving the analogy of a football, it is like the role of a midfielder who knows how to both attack or defend. So, if the opponents attack, the CFO is the person to defend and if there is aggression, the CFO takes the responsibility of making the growth also.”
It is to be mentioned that Sethurathnam Ravi (S Ravi) is a chartered accountant (CA) based in India, promoter and managing partner of Ravi Rajan & Co and the former Chairman of Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). He also serves as an Independent Director of Tourism Finance Corporation of India. In 2019, Ravi also joined SBI Payments Services Pvt. Ltd as one of the Board Directors. Before joining BSE, Ravi served on boards of various companies such as, UTI Company Pvt Ltd., SMERA Ratings, SBI-SG Global Securities, STCI Finance, and BOI Merchant Bankers. He was a member of SEBI’s takeover panel and Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI)
“You will be surprised to know the amount of compliance that has increased over the last few years. If you take the whole ecosystem together, the compliance cost has also gone up by 4% because there are returns, submissions to board as well as to regulators, results have to be submitted to SEBI, insider trading guidelines which are very complex, etc. And then, getting the board together to understand all the guidelines, etc. So, every CFO has to deal with compliance structure. Although we are moving towards an automated compliance, yet the role of human element of a CFO is indispensable,” Ravi further in his session themed’ CFO as the Chief Future Officer’.
The main duties of a midfielder are to maintain possession of the ball, taking the ball from defenders and feeding it to the strikers, as well as dispossessing opposing players And Ravi feels it is the same way a CFO has to makes his own making his own attacks and defenses.
“The promoter is always keen to grow the company and will look for expansion and acquisition and will aim for enhanced bottomline and topline. They will expect the CFO to get the resources and do everything. So,it is the CFO who can control the growth because a wrong decision during the period of growth of the company can actually take it down. He is the regulator to the growth and must provide an ecosystem where the growth can be moderated yet sustain the organization. The CFO has to mitigate the risks of the organization and hence his role is evolving,” Ravi further added.