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Jim Williams

New Position: Chief financial officer, CFO Strategic Partners, Tampa. Previous Position: Chief financial officer, Clayton Acquisition Co., Tampa

By Times Staff Writer
Published September 12, 2005

Jim Williams' new business card might seem like a typo - CFO with CFO Strategic Partners but that's his new job after nearly three years of semiretirement.

As a chief financial officer, newly assigned to CFO Strategic Partners' Tampa office, Williams will provide upper-management services to a series of clients rather than to a single company.

"We're more or less a financial partner," Williams explained. "The firm provides businesses with financial services. We provide services that a full-time CFO might provide.That would be anything from strategic planning to tax planning to budgeting to financing packages, things of that nature."

These services are provided to companies not yet large enough to have their own CFOs, Williams said. "The range of revenue of the current client base is $100-million down, depending on the type of business."

CFO Strategic Partners provides businesses with financial executives on a consulting basis. The company has headquarters in Orlando and an office in Atlanta.

Williams said that with less than a month in his new role, he has two bay area clients, each requiring one to two days a week of his expertise. "I'm in the early stages with them," he said. "I do the things day-to-day any CFO would or might be doing for his employer."

Williams said he likes the challenge of working for a variety of clients. "It's a question of getting a variety, kind of a different challenge every day, with a number of different businesses as opposed to working with one company," he said. "Three-fourths of my career was working with one company. This is a different twist."

A native of Birmingham, Ala., Williams earned a bachelor's degree in accounting from Samford University in Birmingham in 1973. He earned his CPA certification soon afterward and began his career, mostly in public accounting, working for various firms in Birmingham until 1984.

Williams, 54, said he knew in high school that he wanted to go into finance. "I wanted to be a CPA and practice public accounting," he said. "Quite frankly, I kind of had a knack for math skills.

"There's a world of difference between public accounting and being a CFO or controller," he said. "Totally different. In public accounting, you get in and get out." As a CFO, there is an opportunity to become an integral part of a team, he said.

In 1984, he relocated to Cape Coral to be chief financial officer of Donald Justice Corp., a company involved in utility construction, mining, trucking and other ventures. After five years, Williams left to join Clayton Acquisition Co. in Tampa, first as controller, then as chief financial officer.

Williams stayed with Clayton until the company was sold in 2002. Since then, he has been semiretired, sometimes consulting, including a brief period with a Tampa nonprofit, Spring of Tampa Bay.

What brought him back to the workaday world? "I kind of missed the mental challenges," he admitted. "I wasn't using my skills as much as I like to. I'm still young enough to do it."

Williams and his wife, Debbie, live in Valrico and have four children. When he's not on the golf course, Williams said they often travel to Washington, D.C., or North Carolina. "We do like to travel," he said.

[Last modified September 9, 2005, 19:05:03]