Want a reminder of how delicate international trade can be? Look to the Strait of Hormuz, a key Middle East shipping lane that some feared Iran would shut down amid its conflict with Israel and the US.

Recent analysis of more than a million supplier locations of 80 major corporations by Marsh-owned supply-chain platform Sentrisk showed nearly all (95%) of the companies had at least one supplier in the region. Most of them are tier three suppliers, meaning they don’t work directly with the buyer and tend to be least visible to organizations. Also noteworthy is that suppliers this far down the supply chain will encounter challenges months before corporate buyers feel the sting, according to Dave Petrucci, managing director at Protiviti.

But really, in a time of immense uncertainty, there are ample supply challenges that will spike a CFO’s blood pressure. Look no further than President Donald Trump’s latest tariff threats.

CFOs of organizations that don’t have full supply chain visibility—the practice of tracking a product from its origin story all the way to the grand finale, when it reaches the end user’s hands—are flirting with financial disaster. Experts told us that recent global events are evidence of that.

International conflict and new trade barriers “have provided a greater push, or emphasis, on this topic,” but well before this, companies have looked to supply chain visibility as a key to “unlocking the right use cases that can drive significant value,” Sameer Anand, who leads EY-Parthenon’s supply chain practice in the Americas, told CFO Brew.

For more on building supply chain visibility, click here.—AZ

There’s been a lot of commotion at a group that doesn’t normally catch the mainstream spotlight.

Erica Y. Williams announced this week that she’s stepping down as chair of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, effective Tuesday, July 22. She announced her departure after SEC head Paul Atkins asked that she resign, according to media reports.

“With high economic uncertainty increasing the risk of fraud, the PCAOB’s mission is as important as ever,” Williams said in a news release. “It’s critical the expert PCAOB staff continue to be empowered to carry out their work of ensuring American investors are protected.”

Williams started her tenure as chair of PCAOB, an independent watchdog that Congress created through the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002 to oversee auditors of public companies, back in January 2022. She was reappointed last year.

Williams defended the PCAOB when it was still on the chopping block. “History tells us that when the economy is tight, the risk of fraud goes up. And the stakes are high,” she told the Wall Street Journal this spring.

For more on Williams’s departure, click here.—AZ

In Q1, the big banks brought in record profits from trading as investors, spooked by volatility, rushed to make changes to their portfolios. In Q2, the banks still made, well, bank, though trading was less frenzied. Consumers are hanging in there, bank leaders said during earnings calls, and deals may be returning.

JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley all beat analysts’ expectations for both revenue and earnings per share in the most recent quarter. Bank of America was the only major US bank to miss expectations for revenue in Q2; even so, it notched its second-highest top-line revenue ever.

Riding the rapids: Q2 kicked off with April 2’s “Liberation Day” tariffs, but within a few weeks’ time, businesses and consumers seemed to adapt, executives said. Ted Pick, CEO of Morgan Stanley, observed, per Reuters, that “the second quarter unfolded with two distinct halves. The first half began with uncertainty and market volatility associated with the US trade policy, and the second half ended with increasing engagement and a steady rebound in capital markets.”

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon likewise noted in a press release that “[a]t this time, the economy and markets are generally responding positively to the evolving policy environment.” And Citi CFO Mark Mason said that market participants have had “more growing familiarity with how to deal with uncertainty and volatility and the impact of tariffs,” Reuters reported. (TACOs, anyone?)

Just how good was the big banks’ quarter?—CV