CFO Brew

It’s safe to say that getting charged with a fraud scheme connected to the billion-dollar collapse of a company is definitely…subprime. On August 18, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged the former CEO, CFO, and senior director of finance of subprime auto lender Tricolor Holdings for their roles in an alleged multiyear schemeto defraud investors.

When we last spoke with Baker Tilly chief executive Eric Miles, the contract ink on its acquisition of Moss Adams was still drying and he was the CEO in waiting. A year-plus later, we caught up with Miles to hear what’s kept him busy since then, and what kind of strategic course leadership has laid out for the sixth-largest US accounting firm. Baker Tilly’s “North Star” is adapting to the increasingly complex needs of the middle-market businesses it serves, Miles told us.

In November 2024, PKF O’Connor Davies, an accounting firm with a 135-year legacy, accepted investment from private equity firms Investcorp and Canadian pension investment manager PSP Investments. A year later, it announced a goal of reaching $1 billion a year in revenue. It also restructured much of its leadership, keeping CEO Kevin Keane but bringing in Philip Comerford, an exec with a lengthy PE resume focused on business services investments, as CFO.

You never know what someone else is going through. Last week, if corporations had feelings, two major big-box retailers would’ve had drastically different emotional states: Target was the eternal optimist; Walmart was, well, that person who tries their best to put on a smile when they’re going through a rough patch. Whenever the two retailers report earnings, they offer a glimpse into how the American consumer is holding up, and right now, they’re telling different stories.

AI is a powerful tool, ready to deliver CFOs all sorts of insights on a company’s financial performance, nearly instantly. The problem for many, though, is the quality of the data (or lack thereof) those AI tools are drawing from.

First-time CFOs looking for a how-to guide might want to take a page out of Carmen Chan’s playbook. Chan, who most recently served as managing director of Barclays, technically started her new gig as the CFO of online employment marketplace ZipRecruiter on August 17, but the work really kicked off weeks before that. Her ZipRecruiter role marks Chan’s first CFO job: Before Barclays, Chan served as VP of corporate development and investor relations at digital health company Noom.

Imagine the world’s first magical to-do list: Add one item to it, and a few others automatically get marked complete at the same time. Here’s the thing: It’s not totally magic. In fact, it’s what your to-do list might look like if you start viewing sustainability efforts and capital strategy as connected parts of a puzzle rather than treating them as separate entities.

Consumers are holding off on big-ticket items like remodeling projects. Uncertainty, combined with what Home Depot CFO Richard McPhail described to CNBC as “frozen” housing market conditions, has made major home improvement retailers cautious about their prospects for the remainder of 2026. In the Q2 2026 earnings call on Tuesday, Home Depot reiterated its guidance for the full year, and a day later competitor Lowe’s revised its outlook to the lower end of what it had previously stated.

Richard Kopelman, longtime CEO of top-20 accounting firm Aprio, has seen the organization through many shifts since he started out in 1992 as a staff accountant. But in the last few years, the changes have come rapid-fire. In 2017, the Atlanta-based firm, then known as Habif, Arogeti & Wynne (HA&W), rebranded to Aprio. In 2024, it took on private equity investment from Charlesbank Capital. And since then it’s been an M&A machine, making about 30 acquisitions since October 2024.

For financial services giant Block, shifting business models via a reorganization in 2024 has allowed it to better serve both merchants and consumers, CFO Amrita Ahuja told CFO Brew.