Minister of State for Finance, Jayant Sinha Launches ‘The CFO Board’: An Initiative by Finance Leaders

On 9 January, 2015, the Minister of State for Finance, Mr. Jayant Sinha launched ‘The CFO Board’, an initiative conceptualized jointly by KPMG in India and CFO India, part of the 9.9 Media group, with an aim to create a credible and quality think tank for matters relating to finance and governance.    

The CFO Board is an effort to bring together India’s eminent finance professionals, with over 50 decades of combined experience, on a non- partisan platform dedicated to engage with policy-makers on behalf of the finance and business community and effect policy change through dialogue and sharing of information, insights, effective practices and international benchmarks, whenever and wherever required. 

The 23 member working group of The CFO Board will be chaired by Mr. M. Damodaran (former SEBI Chairman). Each of these members bring with them depth and breadth of experience in multiple roles across various aspects of finance.  

Addressing the members of The CFO Board’s working group, Mr. Jayant Sinha, Minister of State for Finance stated, "The government is serious about restarting the investment cycle and sustainable job creation.  The CFO Board is a great initiative.  We hope it will allow the government and other stakeholders to tap into the considerable expertise of the finance sector veterans in an unbiased manner."

Mr. M. Damodaran, former SEBI Chairman and Chairman of The CFO Board said, “India is moving towards fulfillment of its potential. The CFO Board has come into being with the intention of using the collective wisdom of the group in the large national cause".

“Today, the role of a CFO can be much more diverse than understood in the conventional model.  A CFO plays a multi dimensional and multi faceted role and can be an effective business partner to the CEO, working towards building business policy and strategy.  This initiative is our collective effort to bring together experts across industries and sectors who share a common objective of generating high quality implementable ideas for the industry and the economy in conjunction” said Mr. Richard Rekhy, CEO, KPMG in India.

Speaking about The CFO Board initiative, Ms. Anuradha Das Mathur, Founder and Director, 9.9 Media said, “Despite the critical role played by this community, senior finance professionals have had no share of voice. While they are the most impacted by developments in the macroeconomy or fiscal measures, for a variety of reasons, the CFO community faces a vacuum in terms of dialogue. Its experience, wisdom and insights could serve policy-making by providing well-informed, implementable, non-partisan inputs - beyond company and industry specific agendas, given the criticality of private enterprise to India's growth."

"The CFO Board aims to focus on issues where its inputs will be most valued, differentiated and experience-based and not add to popular discourse on a wide range of matters.” she further added.

“The CFO Board is a platform for the finest Indian finance leaders to interact and engage on issues faced by industry at a policy level. The Board is a mechanism to make the Indian finance community's voice heard and to generate the appropriate inputs to policy making” commented Vikram Aggarwal, senior Chartered Accountant, at the launch event.

In today’s highly dynamic and demanding business environment, organisations are challenged with commercial, legal and environment risks.  Further, the lack of a common and effective platform where finance leaders can work together to address these issues only adds to this woe. The CFO Board would be different as it intends to emerge as a credible, informed and non-partisan view of the CFO community, given the criticality of private enterprise to India's growth.

About KPMG in India

KPMG in India is the Indian member firm of KPMG International and was established in September 1993. It strives to provide rapid, performance-based, industry-focussed and technology-enabled services, which reflect a shared knowledge of global and local industries and our experience of the Indian business environment. KPMG provides services to over 4,500 international and national clients in India and has offices in Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Pune and Kochi.

www.kpmg.com/in

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