Benzinga cites Sudip Datta's research on gender and accuracy among CFOs

This week in gender wars: CEO ousters and Google memos

Alphabet Inc. staff provoked a national debate on the technical capabilities of women, and the already-intimate cadre of female CEOs contracted with the ousters of Avon Products, Inc.’s Sheri McCoy and Mondelez International Inc.’s Irene Rosenfeld.

Factoring in the losses, women now lead just 27 of S&P 500 firms. Just one, International Business Machines Corp.’s Ginni Rometty, heads a Dow 30. But interestingly enough, both scholarship and prolific investors suggest that, if you want to make money (and do it with integrity), you should probably place it in the hands of women. Companies with female CFOs generally provide results closer to analyst forecasts than do companies with male CFOs, and prediction accuracy improves when firms transition from male to female CFOs, according to research by Sudip Datta, Department of Finance chair at Wayne State University. Female CFOs enhance forecast accuracy by providing high-quality disclosure,” Datta wrote in his report. Similarly, female analysts tend to produce more accurate earnings estimates primarily attributable to a lower level of overconfidence in their knowledge and abilities, Datta reported.

Benzinga

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