2020 will go down in the corporate annals as the year of the CFO. That’s a bold pronouncement, but at a time of extraordinary economic uncertainty during a literal existential crisis, CEOs of private companies (and publicly traded ones, too) turned to the professional knowledge and judgment of their CFOs to plan, manage and direct the corporate ship through the maelstrom.

This leadership role was so important that many private companies that previously provided scant equity-based compensation to their CFOs altered their stance. According to Chief Executive’s CEO & Senior Executive Compensation Report, private companies with more than $1 billion in annual revenues awarded equity ownership stakes representing 20 percent of their CFOs’ median compensation in 2020, compared to no equity-based compensation the year before. By contrast, median equity-based compensation for Chief Operating Officers represented 2 percent of median compensation.

…Similar survey findings on public companies indicates that CFOs at the largest 100 companies in the S&P 500 received a reported 7 percent increase in median pay in 2020, of which stock option awards increased 13 percent year-over-year, according to data provider MyLogIQ.