Business

Private equity CFOs under pressure to stay exit-ready and boost AI in finance

Published

1 month ago

November 5, 2025

Good morning. Private equity (PE) firms are ramping up investment after a cautious stretch, but they are now more selective, prioritizing resilient, long-term opportunities in sectors such as technology, health care, and energy. At the same time, portfolio company CFOs face growing pressure from PE sponsors to be “exit-ready” and to ensure their companies have AI-enabled finance capabilities.

Accordion, a consulting firm specializing in private equity, released the report “Exit readiness in private equity.” Exit readiness refers to being strategically prepared for a sale or public offering, highlighting strong performance, credible growth potential, and operational improvements to attract buyers.

Nearly all (97%) sponsors surveyed expect CFOs to maintain an “always exit-ready” posture, but only 20% of CFOs say they operate this way in reality. Most (61%) shift into exit mode only when a sale window appears—a compressed sprint that sponsors say can reduce valuation by one to three turns of the exit multiple.

Sponsors define exit readiness holistically: active value-creation levers, integrated systems, and credible equity stories. The CFOs surveyed, however, tend to focus on tactical tasks, such as diligence packs, audit-ready financials. Only 32% include value creation in their definition.

More than 80% of sponsors want exit prep to begin 12–24 months before a sale, yet half of CFOs begin just three to six months out. Over 70% of sponsors said compressed prep is linked to lower deal multiples, and 39% cite rushed exits as a cause of post-sale adjustments.

“With the Fed’s recent rate cut, a resurgence in dry powder, and a potential multi-year exit cycle ahead, those who treat readiness as a last-minute exercise risk missing the moment,” Nick Leopard, CEO of Accordion, said in a statement.

The findings are based on a survey of 200 senior executives at PE sponsors and 200 CFOs at PE-backed companies with annual revenues over $50 million.

Another key finding is the rising importance of AI: 85% of buyers now consider AI-enabled finance when valuing companies. Sponsored CFOs who embed AI in planning, forecasting, and reporting are twice as likely to achieve smoother exits and higher valuations, according to Accordion.

In the PE world, finance chiefs live with the daily pressure of achieving double-digit returns and must be bold and proactive. Surveyed CFOs point to common exit-readiness challenges, including bandwidth constraints, fragmented systems, unclear sponsor expectations, and lack of prior exit experience—all of which sponsors say directly impact valuation.

Pamela Stern, managing director and head of commercial excellence at Accordion, advised that CFOs need “a playbook for continuous or ‘always-on’ exit readiness.” This requires embedding exit discipline into day-to-day operations, aligning sponsors and finance teams around shared value-creation goals, and ensuring optimization opportunities are not missed, according to Stern.

Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

***Upcoming Event: Join us for our next Emerging CFO webinar, Optimizing for a Human-Machine Workforce, presented in partnership with Workday, on Nov. 13 from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. ET. Speakers include: Nitin Mittal, principal, global AI leader at Deloitte and Thadd Stricker, CFO of INRIX.

We’ll explore how leading CFOs are rethinking the future of work in the age of agentic AI—including when to deploy AI agents to accelerate automation, how to balance ROI tradeoffs between human and digital talent, and the upskilling strategies CFOs are applying to optimize their workforces for the future.

You can register here. Email us at CFOCollaborative@Fortune.com with any questions.

Leaderboard

Michele Allen, CFO and head of strategy at Wyndham Hotels & Resorts (NYSE: WH), will be departing the company to pursue a new career opportunity outside of the hotel industry. Kurt Albert, currently treasurer and head of financial partnerships and planning, has been appointed interim CFO, effective immediately. Wyndham plans to conduct a search for a permanent CFO, which will consider both internal and external candidates. Allen will serve in an advisory role at Wyndham through the end of 2025.

Max Tunnicliff was appointed CFO and senior executive vice president of Fastenal Company (Nasdaq: FAST), effective Nov. 10. Tunnicliff most recently served as CFO of Beko Europe, a leading home appliance business. Previously, he served in a variety of senior finance leadership roles with Whirlpool Corporation, including head of internal audit and VP of strategy, and CFO of the Asia Pacific region.

Big Deal

“AI at work: From vision to value” is a new report by software company monday.com, which partnered with Nielsen to survey 500 directors across the U.S. and U.K. The survey topics ranged from AI adoption drivers to emotions about AI usage, and the data was paired with insights from monday.com workflows.

Ninety-four percent of directors said AI is already in use across their organizations, and for more than half, it’s embedded in at least 50% of departmental workflows.

Leaders say their top motivators for adopting AI are speed, accuracy, and productivity, but “innovation” isn’t listed among the top five. Meanwhile, 40% cite privacy and security as the main barriers to broader adoption.

Only 38% of respondents cited labor reduction as a motivator for AI adoption, while most say AI helps teams reduce manual work and take on more strategic responsibilities.

Large organizations are lagging behind smaller companies in AI usage per employee, with regulatory and ROI concerns cited as top barriers, according to the report.

Going deeper

“How Fed Policy and Trade Talks Shape Market Expectations” is a new episode of Wharton’s This Week in Business podcast. Jeremy Siegel, emeritus professor of finance at Wharton and senior economist at WisdomTree, analyzes the Federal Reserve’s latest rate decisions, the U.S. labor market amid AI-driven changes, and the global economic implications of renewed U.S.-China trade negotiations.

Overheard

“We see wealthy people have been buying back into cities because they miss them—they miss the action.”

—The Corcoran Group CEO Pamela Liebman told Fortune in an interview. Liebman insists that the decision to move back into major metropolitan hubs like Manhattan has less to do with RTO and more to do with a fear of being left behind in an uncertain job market.

Source link

Business

The ‘Great Housing Reset’ is coming: Income growth will outpace home-price growth in 2026

Published

7 minutes ago

December 6, 2025

Jace Porter

Homebuyers may experience a reprieve in 2026 as price normalization and an increase in home sales over the next year will take some pressure off the market—but don’t expect homebuying to be affordable in the short run for Gen Z and young families.

The “Great Housing Reset” will start next year, with income growth outpacing home-price growth for a prolonged period for the first time since the Great Recession era, according to a Redfin report released this week.

The residential real estate brokerage sees mortgage rates in the low-6% range, down from down from the 2025 average of 6.6%; a median home sales price increase of just 1%, down from 2% this year; and monthly housing payments growth that will lag behind wage growth, which will remain steady at 4%.

These trends toward increased affordability will likely bring back some house hunters to the market, but many Gen Zers and young families will opt for nontraditional living situations, according to the report.

More adult children will be living with their parents, as households continue to shift further away from a nuclear family structure, Redfin predicted.

“Picture a garage that’s converted into a second primary suite for adult children moving back in with their parents,” the report’s authors wrote. “Redfin agents in places like Los Angeles and Nashville say more homeowners are planning to tailor their homes to share with extended family.”

Gen Z and millennial homeownership rates plateaued last year, with no improvement expected. Just over one-quarter of Gen Zers owned their home in 2024, while the rate for millennial owners was 54.9% in the same year.

Meanwhile, about 6% of Americans who struggled to afford housing as of mid-2025 moved back in with their parents, while another 6% moved in with roommates. Both trends are expected to increase in 2026, according to the report.

Obstacles to home affordability

Despite factors that could increase affordability for prospective homebuyers, C. Scott Schwefel, a real estate attorney at Shipman, Shaiken & Schwefel, LLC, told Fortune that income growth and home-price growth are just a few keys to sustainable homeownership.

An improved income-to-price ratio is welcome, but unless tax bills stabilize, many households may not experience a net relief, Schwefel said.

“Prospective buyers need to recognize that affordability is not just price versus income…it’s price, mortgage rate and the annual bill for living in a place—and that bill includes property taxes,” he added.

In November, voters—especially young ones—showed lowering housing costs is their priority, the report said. But they also face high sale prices and mortgage rates, inflated insurance premiums, and potential utility costs hikes due to a data center construction boom that’s driving up energy bills. The report’s authors expect there to be a bipartisan push to help remedy the housing affordability crisis.

Still, an affordable housing market for first-time home buyers and young families still may be far away.

“The U.S. housing market should be considered moving from frozen to thawing,” Sergio Altomare, CEO of Hearthfire Holdings, a real estate private equity and development company, told Fortune.

“Prices aren’t surging, but they’re no longer falling,” he added. “We are beginning to unlock some activity that’s been trapped for a couple of years.”

Source link

Business

Nvidia’s CEO says AI adoption will be gradual, but we still may all end up making robot clothing

Published

1 hour ago

December 6, 2025

Jace Porter

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang doesn’t foresee a sudden spike of AI-related layoffs, but that doesn’t mean the technology won’t drastically change the job market—or even create new roles like robot tailors.

The jobs that will be the most resistant to AI’s creeping effect will be those that consist of more than just routine tasks, Huang said during an interview with podcast host Joe Rogan this week.

“If your job is just to chop vegetables, Cuisinart’s gonna replace you,” Huang said.

On the other hand, some jobs, such as radiologists, may be safe because their role isn’t just about taking scans, but rather interpreting those images to diagnose people.

“The image studying is simply a task in service of diagnosing the disease,” he said.

Huang allowed that some jobs will indeed go away, although he stopped short of using the drastic language from others like Geoffrey Hinton a.k.a. “the Godfather of AI” and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, both of whom have previously predicted massive unemployment thanks to the improvement of AI tools.

Yet, the potential, AI-dominated job market Huang imagines may also add some new jobs, he theorized. This includes the possibility that there will be a newfound demand for technicians to help build and maintain future AI assistants, Huang said, but also other industries that are harder to imagine.

“You’re gonna have robot apparel, so a whole industry of—isn’t that right? Because I want my robot to look different than your robot,” Huang said. “So you’re gonna have a whole apparel industry for robots.”

The idea of AI-powered robots dominating jobs once held by humans may sound like science fiction, and yet some of the world’s most important tech companies are already trying to make it a reality.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has made the company’s Optimus robot a central tenet of its future business strategy. Just last month, Musk predicted money will no longer exist in the future and work will be optional within the next 10 to 20 years thanks to a fully fledged robotic workforce.

AI is also advancing so rapidly that it already has the potential to replace millions of jobs. AI can adequately complete work equating to about 12% of U.S. jobs, according to a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) report from last month. This represents about 151 million workers representing more than $1 trillion in pay, which is on the hook thanks to potential AI disruption, according to the study.

Even Huang’s potentially new job of AI robot clothesmaker may not last. When asked by Rogan whether robots could eventually make apparel for other robots, Huang replied: “Eventually. And then there’ll be something else.”

Source link

Business

The ‘Mister Rogers’ of Corporate America shows Gen Z how to handle toxic bosses

Published

2 hours ago

December 6, 2025

Jace Porter

After two decades of climbing the corporate ladder at companies ranging from ABC, ESPN, and Charter Communications (commonly known as Spectrum), Timm Chiusano quit it all to become a content creator.

He wasn’t just walking away from high titles, but a high salary, too. In his peak years, Chiusano made $600,000 to $800,000 annually. But in June of 2024, after giving a 12-week notice, he “responsibility fired himself” from his corporate job as VP of production and creative services at Charter.

He did it all to help others navigate the challenges of a workplace, and appreciate the most mundane parts of life on TikTok.

@timmchiusano

most people are posting their 2024 recaps; these are a few of my favorite moments from the year that was, but i need to start reintroducing myself too i dont have a college degree, no one in my life knew that until i was 35 when i eventually got my foot in the door in my early 20’s after a few years of substitute teaching and part time jobs, i thought for sure i had found the career path of my dreams in live sports production i didn’t think i had a chance of surviving that first college football season but i busted my ass, stuck around and got promoted 5 times in 5 years then i met a girl in Las Vegas, got married in 7 months, and freaked out about my career that had me travelling 36 weeks a year i had to find a more stable “desk job”, i was scared shitless that i was pigeonholed and the travel would eventually destroy my marriage i crafted a narative for espn arguing they needed me on their marketing team because of my unique perspective coming from the production side i got rejected, but kept trying and a year i got that job the 7 years with espn were incredible, but also exhausting and raised all kinds of questions about corporate america, toxic situations, and capitalism in general why was i borderline heart attack stressed so often when i could see that my ideas were literally generating 2,000 times the money that i was getting paid? in 2012 i had a kid and in 2013 i got the biggest job of my career to reinvent how to produce 20,000 commercials a year for small business it took 12 rounds of interviews, a drug test i somehow passed, and a background check that finally made me tell my wife of 8 years that i didnt have a college degree they brought me in the thursday before my first day and told me what i told grace in that clip the next decade was an insane blur; i saw everything one would ever see in their career from the perspective of an executive at a fortune 100 i started making tiktoks, kinda blacked out at some point in 2019 and responsibly fired myself in 2024 to see what i might be capable of on my own with all the skills i picked up along my career journey now the mission is pay what i know forward, and see if i can become the mr rogers of corporate america cc: @grace beverley @Ryan Holiday @Subway Oracle

♬ original sound – timm chiusano

What started as short-video vlogs on just about anything in 2020 (reviews on protein bars, sushi, and sneakers) later transitioned to videos on growing up, and dealing with life’s challenges, like coming to terms when you have a toxic boss. Today, his platform on TikTok has over 1 million followers.

With the help of going viral from his “loop” format where videos end and seamlessly circle back to the beginning, he began making more videos as a side-hustle on top of his day-to-day tasks in the office.

“How can I get people to be smarter and more comfortable about their careers in ways that are gonna help on a day-to-day basis?” Chiusano told Fortune.

Today, he could go by many titles: former vice president at a Fortune 100 company, motivational speaker, dad, content creator, or as he labels himself, the Mister Rogers of Corporate America.

Just as the late public television icon helped kids navigate the complexities of childhood, Chiusano wants to help young adults think about how to approach their careers and their potential to make an impact.

“Mister Rogers is the greatest of all time in his space. I will never get to that level of impact. But it’s an easy way to describe what I’m trying to do, and it consistently gives me a goal to strive for,” he said. “There are some parallels here with the quirkiness.”

Firing himself after 25 years in the corporate world

Even with years in corporate, Chiusano doesn’t resemble the look of a typical buttoned-up executive. Today, he has more of a relaxed Brooklyn dad attire, with a sleeve of tattoos and a confidence to blend in with any trendy middle aged man in Soho. During our interview, he showed off one of the first tattoos he got: two businessmen shaking hands, a reference to Radiohead’s OK Computer album.

“This is a dope ass Monday in your 40s,” began one of his videos.

It consisted of Chiusano doing everyday things such as eating leftovers, going to the gym, training for the NYC marathon, taking out the trash, dropping his daughter off at school, a rehearsal for a Ted Talk, eating lunch with his wife, and brand deal meetings. Though the content sounds pretty normal, that’s the point.

“The reason why I fired myself in the first place was to be here,” he says in the video while picking his daughter up from school.

Today, Chiusano spends his days making content on navigating workplace culture, public speaking, brand deals, brand partnerships, executive coaching, writing a book, and the most important job: being a dad to his 13-year-old daughter Evelyn.

“I’m basically flat [in salary] to where I was, and this is everything I could ever want in the world,” he said. “The ability to send my kid to the school she’s been going to, eat sushi takeout almost as much as I’d like, and do nice things for my wife.”

In fact, when sitting inside one of his favorite New York City spots, Lure Fishbar, he keeps getting stopped by regulars who know him by name. He points out that one of his favorite interviews he filmed here was with legendary filmmaker Ken Burns.

Advice to Gen Z

In a time where Gen Z has been steering to more unconventional paths, like content creation or skill trades rather than just a 9-to-5 office job, Chiusano opens up a lens to what life looks like when deciding to be present rather than always looking for what’s next—a mistake he said he made in his 20s.

Instead, he wants to teach the younger generation to build skills for as long as you can, but “if you are unhappy, that’s a very different conversation.”

“I think some people will make themselves more unhappy because they feel like that’s what’s expected of a situation,” he said.

“I would love to be able to empower your generation more, to be like somebody’s gonna have to be the head of HR at that super random company to put cool standards and practices in place for better work-life balance for the employees.”

Source link