The Southern Regional Committee of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Pakistan (ICAP) organised a seminar in collaboration with the Institute of Business Strategy (IBS), New Jersey on the topic "The CFO: Becoming a Strategic Partner" on Thursday at a local hotel in Karachi. Saleem Sufi, Strategist based in the US & Executive Director at the Institute of Business Strategy was the speaker.
Saleem Sufi emphasised on changes and challenges for the CFOs who are fulfilling the role of a strategic partner to the CEOs. In today's organisational challenges CFO's role is transformational - leadership of change that is creating synergy and building teams. CFOs need to apply vision, determination and above all a steady and methodological pace to reap the benefits across the organisation.
The workshop opened by Adnan Rizvi, CPD Convenor SRC who shared few insights related to the topic with the participants. Subsequently Saleem Sufi took over the stage and engaged the participants with his insightful presentation on the evolving role of the CFO in today's competitive business world where he highlighted that a CFO needs to be aware of the overall strategy to achieve the targets set by the CEO or Chairman of the organisation. He highlighted how strategy was a controlling and regulating device for setting organisational direction. Relevant examples were shared of Global companies and how they were maneuvering their strategic direction as per the requirement and demands of the end user. A brief closing ceremony was held where Riaz A Rehman Chamdia, Vice President ICAP South, distributed the course completion certificates to the participants. Finally, Junaid Shekha, Chairman SRC presented the memento to Saleem Sufi and concluded the evening with comments and a vote of thanks. The workshop was attended by CFOs of leading organisations of the country from a diverse range of sectors including Education, Financial Services, FMCG, Media, Oil & Gas, Pharma, Steel & Allied and Telecom.-PR