The Trial Balance is CFO.com’s weekly preview of stories, stats and events to help you prepare.
Part 1 — Cisco CFO uses rival’s M&A deal to frame integration risk
Cisco CFO Mark Patterson used a Dec. 11 investor conference to frame rival Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Juniper Networks acquisition as a source of customer uncertainty, and a competitive advantage for Cisco, highlighting how a heated M&A market is stirring corporate rivalries and demonstrating the growing trend of finance leaders being pushed into more public roles.
Speaking at the Barclays Global Technology, Media, Telecommunications Conference at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco, Patterson said overlapping portfolios, particularly in wireless, have left some HPE customers unsure about product direction as the integration moves forward. That uncertainty, he said, has allowed Cisco to win business as buyers reassess vendor relationships during a period of unusually high deal activity.
The comments come as M&A activity has returned at scale and competition for customers has intensified. Global deal value is on track to reach $4.8 trillion in 2025, the second-highest total on record, according to Bain & Company. Much of that activity has been driven by large, capability-focused transactions, with about 60% of major deals aimed at gaining new technologies or entering adjacent markets. These transactions often reset competitive dynamics quickly, giving rivals incentives to challenge integration narratives in real time.
Patterson’s critique also came with strong contextual timing. The company just posted a 15% year-over-year increase in networking revenue, mostly supported by a campus refresh cycle and rising AI-driven demand. Management pointed to strength across routing, switching and wireless, reinforcing the contrast Patterson drew between Cisco’s execution and HPE’s ongoing integration work.
The backdrop also reflects a widening split in the deal market. Deloitte’s early findings from its 2026 M&A Trends Survey show U.S. deal value jumped 56% quarter over quarter in the third quarter to $598 billion, even as overall deal volume remained flat. Large transactions are accelerating while mid-market activity lags, increasing the stakes for megadeal integration and the pressure on leadership teams to defend strategy publicly.
For CFOs, the lesson here centers on communication, integration clarity and execution speed. In a market dominated by large acquisitions and higher valuations, finance leaders will likely be expected to represent the organization externally more often, for better or worse, shaping how customers and investors interpret deal execution and company performance in real time.
Part 2 — This week
Here’s a list of important market events slated for the week ahead.
Monday, Dec. 15
Tuesday, Dec. 16
- U.S. employment report (Nov. delayed report)
- U.S. unemployment rate, Nov.
- Retail sales (Oct. delayed report)
- S&P flash U.S. services PMI, Dec.
- S&P flash U.S. manufacturing PMI, Dec.
Wednesday, Dec. 17
- Retail sales, Nov.
Thursday, Dec. 18
- Initial jobless claims
- Consumer price index, Nov.
- Core CPI, Nov.
- Philadelphia Fed manufacturing survey, Dec.
Friday, Dec. 19
- Existing home sales, Nov.
- University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment (final), Dec.
Part 3 — Weekly listen: Campfire’s John Glasgow on the SaaS CFO Podcast
On a recent episode of the SaaS CFO Podcast uploaded on Dec. 11, host Ben Murray spoke with Campfire founder and CEO John Glasgow, whose comments reinforced themes he recently expanded on in his CFO.com Q&A. Glasgow traced Campfire’s origin to an acquisition completed by his former employer Invoice2go. The deal generated “500 diligence requests” and “really magnified all of the manual processes that we had.” Much of the reporting work still lived in spreadsheets, he said, which pushed him to “build the modern ERP that I wish I was on as a finance leader.”
In the interview, Glasgow was also clear about who Campfire is built for. He said Campfire focuses “more on complexity of the business than size,” pointing to multi-entity, globally distributed and inventory-light companies as the core use case.
Glasgow said Campfire can support manufacturing environments but does not handle inventory accounting such as FIFO or LIFO inside the platform, instead relying on integrations with third-party or homegrown inventory systems. “The bulk of the base is software businesses,” he said, particularly fast-growing, venture- or PE-backed companies that want to scale without rebuilding their finance stack.
He also added that the scale of Campfire’s recent fundraising forced a shift in mindset, even as his instincts remained conservative. He recalled investors telling him he “needed to learn how to spend,” prompting him to “let loose just a little bit” after building the business frugally. The company’s $35 million Series A followed by a $65 million Series B created room for longer-term investments, but he said the focus remains on deploying capital deliberately to meet enterprise expectations without losing the efficiency that drove early growth.
