功勋CFO告别苹果

    苹果（Apple）多年的财务总监彼得•奥本海默在职业生涯中一向非常低调，除了公司的季度收益电话会议之外，他很少在其他公开场合讲话，自觉地把舞台让给乔布斯、蒂姆•库克以及苹果的其他高管。就连铁杆果粉也很难在街上把他认出来。

    不过这周情况就不一样了。上周二，苹果宣布这位两朝元老即将退休。奥本海默的功成身退使他跻身为商业史上最成功的CFO之一。财务工作的特点就是要甘居幕后，而且很难脱离其他高管独立开展工作。今年51岁的奥本海默在苹果的崛起之路上扮演了重要的角色，尤其是他担任CFO的这十年，苹果迅速崛起成一家全球性的大公司，坐拥1600亿美元现金。

    BGC Partners公司的分析师科林•吉利斯认为：“他的表现非常了不起，我认为他完全可以被视为最优秀的CFO之一。”

    奥本海默的退休，适逢苹果正在经历一个关键时期。苹果已经感受到了来自谷歌（Google）和三星（Samsung）等竞争对手的压力。苹果标志性产品iPhone和iPad的销量已经开始放缓，投资者们大声疾呼，要求苹果尽快推出新的重磅产品重振声势。

    当然，作为CFO，奥本海默并不直接负责公司的日常运营，那是蒂姆•库克和其他高管的职责。但是在苹果的18年时间里，奥本海默既经历了公司濒临破产的绝境，也经历了它的复兴，看着它一路走向全球最有价值的公司，因而这位两朝元老对苹果也有着不容忽视的影响力。

    奥本海默的财务管理为苹果公司的惊人增长做出了很大贡献。在他担任CFO期间，苹果的年营收从80亿美元增长到现在的1710亿美元，翻了20多番。另外他也设计了许多复杂的避税方法，使苹果广大的海外业务的税务成本降到了最低。虽然很多人批评他钻了税制的漏洞，但他坚决为这个策略辩护，而且去年有与库克一起参加国会听证时，还成功地打消了一些人的敌意。

    奥本海默身为苹果高层团队的一员，在一些重大决策中也扮演了重要角色。另外他还帮助公司确定新产品价格，管理生产成本，预测存货等等。另外奥本海默还要负责一个很敏感的任务，那就是设定给华尔街看的季度业绩预期。（然而在苹果快速增长的那些年，这份季度预期通常都制订的太保守了，基本上每次实际收益都超过了预期，令它的准头不高。）

    CFO联盟（CFO Alliance，一个拥有5000余会员的财务高管组织）执行长尼克•艾拉克说：“他是蒂姆•库克的左右手，是在制定和执行政策上最有发言权的人之一。而且不光是在财务方面，在有关消费体验和全球市场的任何事上都是这样。”

    奥本海默在管理苹果的巨额现金方面发现自己竟然没有前例可循。从来没有一家上市公司拥有过这么多的现金。多年来，奥本海默以及苹果的其他高管坚持持有大量现金以备应急。最后在包括激进投资人卡尔•伊坎等投资人的压力下，苹果高管放松了“红线”，决定花1000亿美元用于分红和回购股票，而此举有助于股价进一步上涨。

    Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's longtime chief financial officer, kept an especially low profile during his tenure. He rarely spoke publicly beyond the company's quarterly earnings calls, and happily left the spotlight to Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, and other high-profile members of the company's senior executive team. Even Apple (AAPL) fanatics would have trouble recognizing him on the street.

    That surely won't be the case this week. On Tuesday, Apple announced Oppenheimer's plans to retire. His departure will end one of the most remarkable runs by any chief financial officer, which by the job's very nature is largely behind the scenes and difficult to isolate from the work of other senior executives. Oppenheimer, 51, played a huge role in Apple's rise, and during the decade he served as the company's chief financial officer, Apple blossomed into a huge global business with a $160 billion stockpile of cash.

    "A tremendous performance," said Colin Gillis, an analyst with BGC Partners. "I think he deserves to be ranked up there with some of the best CFOs."

    Oppenheimer's retirement comes at a pivotal moment for Apple, which is feeling the pressure from rivals like Google and Samsung. Growth in sales of Apple's iconic devices -- the iPhone and iPad -- is slowing, and investors are clamoring for new blockbuster products to take up the slack.

    Of course, ultimate responsibility for day-to-day operations and innovation lies not with the chief financial officer but with chief executive Cook and others on his leadership team. Still, Oppenheimer had formidable sway during an 18-year career that spanned Apple's near-bankruptcy and its eventual comeback as the world's most valuable company.

    His financial management kept up with and helped to fuel Apple's astounding growth. During his tenure, annual revenue rose more than 20-fold to $171 billion from just $8 billion. He also engineered many of the complex maneuvers that helped Apple pay minimal taxes on its vast overseas business. Although intensely criticized for using the tax loopholes, he vigorously defended the strategy and, during testimony before a Congressional committee last year with Cook, succeeded in deflecting some of the hostility.

    As a member of Apple's senior executive team, Oppenheimer played a critical role in major decisions. He helped determine the price of new products, manage manufacturing costs, and forecast inventory. Oppenheimer also handled the sensitive job of setting quarterly earnings guidance for Wall Street. (During Apple's years of rapid growth, that guidance ended up being so conservative that the company routinely beat it, making the exercise largely irrelevant.)

    "He was Tim Cook's right-hand man -- one of the key voices in setting strategy and executing on it," said Nick Araco, chief executive of the CFO Alliance, a networking group of 5,000 finance executives. "This wasn't just about the finance function but everything that touches the consumer experience and global market."

    In overseeing Apple's gargantuan cash hoard, Oppenheimer found himself in uncharted territory. No other public company had ever had so much money sitting around. For years, he and his fellow executives clung to the cash, mostly as a rainy day fund. Ultimately, under pressure from investors, including the activist gadfly Carl Icahn, Apple executives loosened the purse strings and embarked on a plan to spend $100 billion on paying dividends and buying back shares, which helps to lift the stock price.