Research suggests that chief financial officers have become a more common source of chief executive officer appointments over recent years. For example, the percentage of new European CEOs who came through the CFO role more than trebled between 2002 and 2024 according to recruitment firm Spencer Stuart.
Otto Jacobsson was appointed CEO of international digital assets PR and communications firm YAP Global in January 2026 after more than five years as the firm’s CFO. He describes the move as an evolution rather than a sudden change given that his previous role was never purely financial.
“I oversaw financial operations, supported our international expansion and increasingly led business development, winning key clients while advising them directly,” he explains. “By the time the conversation about becoming a CEO came up, I was already operating across the business.”
The timing also reflected where the industry is heading. Crypto is maturing with regulators, banks and policymakers engaging seriously with digital assets and clients are evolving from crypto-native communities into institutional and capital markets players.
The company founder felt that this next phase needed someone with a finance background to lead
day-to-day operations while she focused on long-term vision and strategic direction.
Leadership advisory firm Drax emphases rigorous leadership assessment, succession planning and early exposure to broader mandates and suggests the question is no longer whether a CFO can become CEO but whether organisations are identifying and preparing those who are ready.
Jacobsson notes that he didn’t pursue formal qualifications for the move and doesn’t think a certificate is what makes the difference.
“What prepared me was the breadth of the CFO role at a growing agency,” he says. “In a business of our size, the CFO touches everything – pricing, hiring, client relationships, operations – which gave me a working knowledge of the whole company.”
His earlier career was also beneficial. “Advising on M&A at PwC and working on the debt capital markets desk at Deutsche Bank taught me how institutional finance thinks. The skills I did have to build deliberately were the outward-facing ones, from setting a vision the team can get behind to representing the firm externally.”
Jacobsson reckons the biggest shift when moving from CFO to CEO is from protecting value to creating it.
“A CFO’s instinct is to manage risk and ask what could go wrong,” he says. “A CEO has to balance that with conviction about what could go right and be willing to invest ahead of certainty. In a fast-moving industry like digital assets, waiting for perfect information means missing the moment.”
The second challenge is communication. As CFO, your audience is mostly internal and your currency is accuracy. A CEO can be setting direction for teams across multiple locations and representing the firm externally, which means learning to lead through narrative as much as through numbers.
His advice to other CFOs looking to make this move is to firstly expand your remit before the title changes on the basis that the CFOs who make this transition work are those who were already involved in commercial strategy and client or customer relationships.
“Secondly, don’t abandon your finance instincts but rather learn when to override them,” adds Jacobsson. “Financial discipline is a genuine advantage as CEO, especially in a maturing industry where clients and investors expect precision. Pair your natural scepticism with a clear view of
where the business must grow and be prepared to back that view with resources. Finally, invest in how you communicate.”
