CFO turnover rising, analyst firm reports.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: Chief financial officers - Brief article

Anecdotally, there's considerable turnover in the CFO ranks, and statistically, the pace of change increased in the last months of 2005. So says Liberum Research of New York, which includes CFOs in a broader analysis of C-level changes that it issues, as well as breaking out CFO changes separately. Included in the database are CEOs and board of director seats.

Based on Liberum's numbers, the most active months for CEO changes were October, November and December; for CFOs, it was March, November and December. In total, there were 1,855 CFO changes recorded by Liberum last year, compared to 2,106 CEO changes. Overall, the most active industries for all top-level changes were drugs/biotech, with 1,382 changes in 2005, followed by banking with 1,330 and manufacturing with 1,168.

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Liberum (http://liberum.twst.com) also broke down the sources of change: 44 percent were hew hires; 28...