Does the CFO Leave Before the Trouble or After It?

On August 8, 2025, Quantum (QMCO $16.77 -5.09%) told investors to stop relying on its recent financial statements. It had recognized revenue on some service contracts over the wrong periods, and the 8-K said the restatement would cut revenue by about $3.9 million. A week later it filed a notice that its quarterly report would be late, its second late-filing notice that summer. On August 12 the board accepted the resignation of its chief financial officer, and the 8-K reporting it followed on August 18.

Aviat Networks (AVNW $19.90 -1.09%) ran the other way. Its CFO resigned effective May 28, 2024, the day the company reported it, at a company with no late filing or restatement warning in the year before. On September 11, 106 days later, Aviat filed a notice that its 10-K would be late: management had found material weaknesses in its internal controls and errors in results it had already reported for fiscal 2024 and 2023.

So which is it: does a CFO leave a company already in trouble, or does the trouble follow? We read 2,437 CFO departures that companies reported on Form 8-K from January 2020 to October 2025, at 1,916 companies, and looked a year back and a year forward from each one. Mostly it's the first: late filings were as common in the year before the 8-K as in the year after. But one detail in the 8-K, whether the CFO was already gone on the day it was filed, picks out the companies where the trouble was still ahead.

At a glance

What we counted

Item 5.02 of Form 8-K requires a company to report, within four business days, that its principal financial officer has retired, resigned or been terminated. We read each Item 5.02 8-K in our archive and recorded every officer departure in it: the person, the title, whether the 8-K says resigned, retired or terminated, the date the departure takes effect, and the sentence it came from. We kept CFO departures and left out interim CFOs stepping aside, departures at the closing of a merger or acquisition, and bankruptcy wind-downs. Each person counts once per company per year.

Then we looked for four kinds of trouble in each company's filings, in the year before the 8-K and the year after it: a late-filing notice for a 10-K or 10-Q, an 8-K saying earlier financial statements can no longer be relied on (Item 4.02), an auditor change (Item 4.01), and a notice from the exchange about a listing rule (Item 3.01). For a baseline we took 72,555 company-quarters at companies with no CEO or CFO exit within a year either side.

Before or after? Mostly before

Late filings cluster around the exit, on both sides of it. Among companies whose CFO was already gone when the 8-K was filed, 14.5% filed a late-filing notice in the quarter before the 8-K and 14.2% in the quarter after, about three times the rate at companies with no exit. Four quarters out, in either direction, the rate was still about twice the baseline. When the exit was announced 30 or more days ahead, the rate never rose above 2.3%, below the baseline.

Across all 2,437 departures the picture is the same: 15.3% of the companies had filed a late notice in the year before, and 16.0% filed one in the year after. Restatement warnings were about as common before as after, 4.2% and 4.1% of the companies against 2.3% with no exit, and auditor changes nearly so, 11.5% before and 12.5% after against 8.7%. Exchange notices rose a little after the exit, from 15.5% to 18.4%, as you'd expect at companies whose stock kept falling. More often than not, a CFO's exit is part of a story that is already in the filings. That fits a long line of accounting research finding that CEOs and CFOs are more likely to lose their jobs after a restatement, especially one that came from an intentional misstatement rather than an error.

The date says more than the word

Each 8-K uses one of three words, and each departure has a date. Here is how the groups compare:

Retirement looks like retirement: companies whose CFO retired filed late less often than companies with no exit at all. Firings came with the most restatement warnings: 9.9% of companies that terminated their CFO had told investors to stop relying on past statements in the year before, the highest of any group.

The bigger split is the date. The 8-K is due four business days after the event, so a CFO who is gone by the filing day left with little or no notice. Those companies filed a late notice five times as often in the following year as companies whose CFO stayed on for 30 days or more after the announcement, 27.4% against 5.4%. The median planned exit took effect 70 days after its 8-K.

Companies that looked fine

Much of that gap is trouble already under way, so we set aside every company that had filed a late-filing notice in the year before the 8-K. For the 2,065 departures left, the date still matters.

When the CFO was gone by the filing day, 11.1% of these companies filed late within a year, more than twice the 4.8% for companies with no exit. A CFO whose exit was announced a month or more ahead, or who retired, left behind a company no more likely to file late than one with no exit at all. For the 76 abrupt exits that were followed by a late notice, the median wait was 118 days, about one reporting cycle, and 31 came within 90 days. Aviat's came after 106.

A named successor barely helps

We expected an 8-K that names a permanent replacement to be the reassuring kind. It was, only slightly. Among companies with no late notice in the year before, 7.1% of those that named a permanent successor in the same 8-K filed late within a year, against 8.1% of those that named no one and 7.2% of those that named an interim CFO. Exchange notices showed a wider gap: 13.1% with a permanent successor, 17.3% with no one named.

A CEO exit says about the same

CEO departures, counted the same way, look almost identical. Of 1,836 CEO exits, 16.0% came at companies with a late notice in the year before and 15.7% were followed by one, against 15.3% and 16.0% for CFOs. At companies with a clean year before, 7.1% of CEO exits and 7.5% of CFO exits were followed by a late notice. The finance chief leaving is not a special warning on its own. How the exit happens is what carries information.

It's a small-company signal

We split the departures into thirds by how much of the stock traded each day in the three months before the 8-K. The cut-offs were about $268,000 and $8.9 million a day.

In the smallest third, 17.9% of abrupt exits at companies with a clean year before were followed by a late notice, against 6.8% of planned ones. In the middle third the gap was 9.7% against 5.4%. In the largest third there was none to speak of: 1.9% against 1.6%. At a large, heavily traded company, an abrupt CFO exit did not predict a late filing in our sample.

What the stock did

The announcement itself costs a little. Over the five trading days from three days before the 8-K to the day after, the median stock fell 1.5% against the Russell 2000, across 2,864 departures from January 2020 to October 2026 with prices. In the same stocks' five days about a quarter earlier, the median was -0.7%, so the exit is worth about a point. A firing cost more, -2.7%, and a retirement less, -0.9%.

Over the next three months most departures looked like the same stocks' own history. The median stock trailed the index by 5.6%, close to the 5.8% the same stocks trailed it by over three months a year earlier; small stocks tend to lag the index in a median. Abrupt exits were the exception.

When the CFO was gone by the filing day, the median stock trailed the index by 9.0% over the following three months, against 6.9% for the same stocks a year earlier, and it had already trailed by 10.5% in the three months before the 8-K. Firings, for all their restatement history, did about as badly after the 8-K as the same stocks had a year earlier.

What to check when a CFO leaves

• The effective date against the filing date. A CFO who is gone by the day of the 8-K is the version that came before late filings; a date 30 or more days out usually means a planned handover.
• The year of filings before it. A late-filing notice, a restatement warning or an auditor change in the previous year means the exit is part of something already under way, not the start of it.
• The word. "Retire" was the reassuring one. "Terminated" came with the most restatement warnings beforehand.
• The size of the company. At the largest third of companies by trading volume, an abrupt exit said almost nothing about late filings.
• The successor. A named replacement helped less than we expected.

Method

• Departures. Every Item 5.02 8-K in our archive from 2020 on, read for officer departures; our reading covers about 96.5% of the Item 5.02 8-Ks in the archive in each year. We kept items whose title is the company's CFO, leaving out departing CFOs whose own title is interim or acting (a sentence that names an incoming interim CFO doesn't count), departures in an 8-K that also reports a completed acquisition or change of control (Items 2.01 or 5.01) or that ties the exit to a deal closing, and departures in an 8-K that also reports a bankruptcy (Item 1.03) or ties the exit to a wind-down. The same person at the same company within a year counts once, at the first 8-K. In a random check of 60 items, 20 of each type, every one was a real departure of the person named, and seven were deals or interim officers that these rules then left out. "Terminated" is the loosest of the three words: of the 16 that stayed in, 10 say the company ended the job and six say only that the CFO departed or that both sides agreed.
• Who we followed. Departures filed through October 2025, so every company has a full year after, at companies that had filed a 10-K or 10-Q within 400 days before the 8-K.
• Trouble. An NT 10-K or NT 10-Q, or an 8-K reporting Item 4.02, 4.01, 3.01 or 1.03, filed in the 365 days before the 8-K or the 365 days after it.
• Baseline. Company-quarters, starting each January 1, April 1, July 1 and October 1 from 2020 to 2025, at companies that had filed a 10-K or 10-Q within 400 days and had no CEO or CFO exit within a year either side, looking 365 days ahead. The quarterly baseline in the first chart starts in 2021.
• Abrupt or planned. The effective date in the 8-K against its filing date: on or before the filing date counts as gone by the 8-K. 116 departures give no effective date.
• Size. The median daily dollar volume over the 60 trading days ending four days before the 8-K, for the 2,222 departures with enough prices.
• Stock moves. Daily closing prices adjusted for splits and dividends, against the iShares Russell 2000 ETF (IWM). The five-day window runs from three days before the 8-K to the day after, because companies often announce a departure by press release before the 8-K. It is compared with the same stocks' five days about a quarter earlier, and the three-month window after the 8-K with the same stocks' three months a year earlier.

Limitations

• Coverage. Our archive doesn't hold every 8-K and every late-filing notice, and it favors companies still filing today. A company that went dark after its CFO left is the most likely to be missing, so the year after an abrupt exit probably looks better here than it was.
• A late notice is a narrow measure. Most companies that file one still make the extended deadline, and a company can file late without one. Some notices mean almost nothing: Fulton Financial (FULT $24.31 +2.06%)'s CFO resigned effective immediately in February 2024, and 21 days later it filed a late notice because its 10-K reached EDGAR four minutes after the 5:30 p.m. cutoff. It counts here like any other.
• Association, not cause. We can't tell whether a CFO left because of the trouble, the trouble came because the CFO left, or both came from something else.
• Departures named only beside a successor. Our reading misses some exits that an 8-K reports only in a clause next to the successor's appointment, such as "replacing X, who departed the Company". Appointment sentences that name a predecessor with no recorded departure point to about 245 more CFO exits in the period we followed. They are mostly planned successions: 9.4% of those companies filed a late notice in the following year, so counting them would lower the overall rates slightly, to about 15.4% after the 8-K and 14.5% before it, without changing the comparisons.
• The word is the company's. A firing can be reported as a resignation, and a forced exit as a retirement.
• Exchange notices include price notices. Many Item 3.01 notices are about a share price below $1, which follows the stock rather than the accounts.

Conclusion

A CFO's exit usually comes in the middle of a company's trouble, not at its start: late filings were about as common in the year before the 8-K as in the year after. The exits that come before trouble have a recognizable shape. The CFO is already gone on the day the 8-K is filed, the company had a clean year of filings, and it is small. Planned handovers and retirements, by contrast, looked like no exit at all.

Sources

• SEC Form 8-K, General Instructions and Item 5.02, Departure of Directors or Certain Officers: Form 8-K.
• SEC Rule 12b-25, Notification of inability to timely file all or any required portion of a Form 10-K, 10-Q or other report: 17 CFR 240.12b-25.
• Quantum Corporation filings: the NT 10-K of June 30, 2025 (accession 0001193125-25-152651), the non-reliance 8-K of August 8, 2025 (0000709283-25-000021), the NT 10-Q of August 15, 2025 (0000709283-25-000022) and the 8-K of August 18, 2025 (0000709283-25-000023).
• Aviat Networks filings: the 8-K of May 28, 2024 (0001377789-24-000024) and the NT 10-K of September 11, 2024 (0001377789-24-000034).
• Fulton Financial filings: the 8-K of February 9, 2024 (0001193125-24-029965) and the NT 10-K of March 1, 2024 (0001193125-24-056141).
• Hennes, Karen M., Andrew J. Leone, and Brian P. Miller. "The Importance of Distinguishing Errors from Irregularities in Restatement Research: The Case of Restatements and CEO/CFO Turnover." The Accounting Review 83, no. 6 (2008): 1487-1519.
• Arthaud-Day, Marne L., S. Trevis Certo, Catherine M. Dalton, and Dan R. Dalton. "A Changing of the Guard: Executive and Director Turnover Following Corporate Financial Restatements." Academy of Management Journal 49, no. 6 (2006): 1119-1136.