How a PE firm replaces a portfolio CFO, and where it goes wrong.
A sponsor closes on a platform. Somewhere between month six and month eighteen, the finance seat changes hands. Sometimes the founder's controller is asked to become a CFO and cannot. Sometimes the board wants lender reporting, a 13-week cash view and a monthly package that arrives on the fifth, and the person in the chair has never built one. Sometimes the company simply outgrows the person. The pattern is so consistent that we treat every platform close as the start of a clock.
What we see in the public record for the Midwest confirms it. Mason Wells, a Milwaukee sponsor with a $767 million fund, announced three portfolio CFO appointments in 2026 alone. Calvary Industries named its CFO about eight months after the sponsor closed. Every one of those hires was already a sitting CFO somewhere smaller. None of the three announcements named a search firm.
Where it goes wrong
The scorecard is written after the search starts. The sponsor wants a CFO who can run a sale process in three years. The CEO wants someone who will fix the close this quarter. Nobody writes either down, so the search chases two different people and the finalists satisfy neither. We write the scorecard first, with both of them in the room, and we do not make a call until it is agreed.
The map is too small. A generalist firm calls the thirty CFOs it already knows. The right person is usually a VP of Finance at a larger sponsor-backed company two states over, or a controller who has already carried a lender relationship and is ready for the seat. We map eighty to one hundred named people for every search, from leadership pages, filings and announcements we read ourselves, and we call forty of them.
The interview tests confidence instead of track record. Finance leaders interview well. We screen for what they have actually carried: the first institutional close, a covenant reset, a working capital facility, an add-on integration. Candidates who describe those things and candidates who have done them sound alike for the first twenty minutes. The scorecard and the reference calls separate them.
The search is paid for the wrong way. Contingency firms fill a minority of the searches they take because nobody is accountable. Full retainers ask a sponsor to pay a six-figure fee before any work exists. We work engaged: a modest fee at signing, the balance when the placement starts, a one-year replacement guarantee and a two-year off-limits policy. The risk sits on our side of the table.
What a search looks like with us
- Week one: scorecard agreed with the sponsor and the CEO. Outcomes for year one, must-haves, and the three things that disqualify.
- Weeks one to three: the map, eighty to one hundred names. Forty approached by phone. The strongest interviewed against the scorecard by us before the client sees anyone.
- Day thirty: a shortlist of three to five qualified, interested candidates, each with a written assessment. Weekly status from then until the offer is signed.
- Close: structured references on the finalist, help with the offer, and check-ins at 30, 90 and 180 days.
If you are a sponsor or a CEO who will need a finance leader in the next year, fifteen minutes is enough to find out whether we can help. Write to joe@covenantsearch.com.