CFOs and sponsors don’t see eye to eye on IPO readiness

Article March 16, 2026

Only 30% of PE-backed CFOs say their reporting’s public company-ready.

By, Courtney Vein, Senior Reporter, CFO Brew

IPOs picked up in a big way last year, and early results hint that 2026 may also see more companies going public than last year, despite recent market volatility. That prospect will make sponsors eager to pounce when the IPO window is open. But many CFOs of PE-owned companies don’t think their organizations are ready to list yet—at least according to a new survey by private equity advisory firm Accordion.

Almost 60% of the 200 private equity sponsors polled in the survey, fielded in the US and UK in February 2026, believed that at least a quarter of their portfolio companies could go public in the next three years. But less than 20% of the 200 CFOs surveyed, all of whom were at PE-backed companies with revenues above $50 million, said they’d be actively preparing for an IPO in the next 12 months.

Accordion’s report revealed a lack of alignment between sponsors and CFOs on goals for an IPO. For sponsors, “IPO readiness is increasingly viewed as an extension of exit readiness,” report author Shauna Watson, head of the IPO readiness practice at Accordion, wrote, and want to see it “embedded into the operating model.” CFOs, on the other hand, view preparing for an IPO as something they only do once a clear direction has been set, according to Watson.

Sponsors also envisioned a more aggressive IPO timeline than CFOs did. On average, sponsors believed a company should go public six to 12 months after making the decision to do so. CFOs, on the other hand, estimated a timeline twice as long: one to two years.

The disconnect may come from the fact that CFOs have greater insight into workload, constraints, and governance, Watson wrote. (Or perhaps, like Star Trek’s Mr. Scott, they want to be seen as miracle workers.)

And only around 30% of the CFOs said their financial reporting was ready for the scrutiny that comes with going public. Just 25% were “very confident” they could prepare for an IPO without interrupting day-to-day operations.

CFOs and sponsors also disagreed on who in the company they think should “own” the IPO-readiness process.

Around two-thirds of sponsors (65%) thought that CFOs were responsible for the process, but only 15% of CFOs shared that opinion. Over half of CFOs (55%) thought IPO readiness is a task they share with boards, while just 25% of sponsors viewed it as a shared responsibility.

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