If you've got a good FC, why have a "finance" director?

I've often wondered about how long the "finance director" tag can last. I'm not talking about the emergence of the "CFO" in the UK - it's more to do with the fact that outside the very biggest companies, most FDs do a lot more than finance (bits of IT, HR, facilities, procurement and so on). And when a company has a good financial controller to instil discipline, run the finance team and collate reports... well, maybe the board-level guy ought to be called something else.

This latest rumination on the subject was prompted by this story about a company called Andrews Sykes, where FD Anthony Bourne has been made redundant. "One of the non-executive directors, Jean Christophe Pillois, will assume overall responsibility for the group's finance function, assisted by the the group financial controller," it says.

Which makes a scary kind of sense, if you think about it. It's sort of an extension of the audit committee. Now, whether or not the rest of the board - which will take on Bourne's other duties (presumably all those IT, HR etc etc responsibilities) - will be able to hack it is another question. There's a reason FDs end up with that sort of stuff on their plates: they tend to be much better than most people at functions dictated by systems and processes. But it seems quite sensible for the FC to report directly to a non-exec on the pure finance side, no? And when he's ready to use the skills and cross-business expertise he's sure to pick up doing that role... well, maybe he'll call himself something like "Director of Business Services" rather than FD - just to make it clear he's not replaceable by his own FC!

(By the way, my first reaction was: there's a problem at the company, so they're slashing costs from the top - but the latest interims look pretty healthy. Or there's been a board-level falling out. But the release says the financial legwork will have reduced thanks to disposals - hence the "redundancy". So there you have it...)