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New research reported on CFO.com "purports to show that the stock market reacts more favorably to both acquisition announcements and secondary equity offerings made by companies whose finance function is run by women."  The article goes on to state that "the stock-price reaction to acquisitions was approximately 2 percent better when women were running the finance department," and that "women seemed to have an edge when it came to making secondary equity offerings. There, too, the market reaction was about 2 percent better for companies where a woman was in charge of finance." 

 
 As someone who has evaluated hundreds of business plans from CEOs of both genders as a consultant, angel investor and overall startup junkie, I believe this study backs up what I have found to be pervasively true: The business plans and strategic decisions made by women leaders in positions of financial responsibility tend to be much more conservative that those of their male peers.  This has severely hurt women-owned companies when they attempt to raise capital.  Because business plans created by male entrepreneurs tend to be overly optimistic, venture capital firms have been trained to take whatever numbers are presented to them and cut them back significantly to perform worse-case scenarios prior to rendering an investment decision.  When the same stress test is performed on a woman entrepreneur's already conservative numbers, the resulting output doesn't look attractive enough to the potential investors and they walk away.  This is partly why female-led companies received less than 5% of venture capital in 2007. (I don't yet have 2008 numbers but my bet is they won't be much different, or possibly worse.) 
 
Hopefully venture firms and angel investors will figure out what Wall Street investors may already have - that women leaders in positions of financial responsibility are generally less likely to be overly optimistic, rarely hype, and are more critical when evaluating potential ROI - making them safer bets for their investment dollars.  A few venture firms have indeed figured this out and are actually seeking out women-owned companies to better balance their portfilios.  Others are working with Astia (www.astia.org) to help women entrepreneurs get on a more level playing field with their male counterparts.  Given that women are starting businesses at nearly three times the rate of men, it's critical that there is more of a meeting of the minds between how a woman presents her business plan to investors, and how those investors interpret and evaluate the assumptions they're presented with.  Until the playing field has been leveled (as indicated by the amount of venture funding going to female-led businesses), I highly recommend Astia's program and their classes.