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The Role of the Financial Manager 1





The Role of the Financial Manager


Finance for Managerial Decision Making


January 9, 2005


The Role of the Financial Manager 2

Abstract

This paper will discuss the role of the financial manager and how that particular role, in the area of corporate expertise, differs from that of the shareholder and of the employee. The discussion the paper provides will help determine how the financial manager maximizes shareholder value in today's financial market. Lastly, the viewpoint of the financial manager will be compared to that of the shareholder and employee.


The Role of the Financial Manager 3

What is a Financial Manager?

Most critical to this discussion is a clear understanding of what a financial manager is and does and how his or her role aids in helping to establish the valuation of a corporate entity in today's global financial market. Quite simply, a financial manager helps to measure a company's market value and its risk while also helping to systematically reduce its costs and the time necessary to make informed decisions regarding objective driven operations. This is quite a demanding game plan for an individual and most often financial managers, in the corporate world, work in cooperation with a team of financial experts. Each member of that team perhaps having expertise in differing areas of activity, but each however, being no less expert in his or her respective area of endeavors in behalf of the corporation. The team is assembled under the direction of the officer know in the corporation as the Chief Financial Officer who today is becoming increasingly indispensable to the CEO who directs a modern model of action driven, bottom-line oriented corporate activity (Couto, Neilson, 2004). One can accurately state that the role of the...