When Jorge Gomez was named CFO of Cardinal Health's pharmaceutical division this past February, he was taking charge of the finances of an operation about which he already knew a good deal. At the time, Gomez was serving as treasurer of its parent company, Dublin, Ohio-based Cardinal Health, a $103-billion drug distribution company, and prior to that, he had been the company's controller. The pharmaceutical division accounts for $94 billion of Cardinal Health's revenue.

“Cardinal Health has a pretty robust rotational program for helping executives become familiar with various roles in the company,” says Gomez, noting that the person he succeeded as CFO of the pharmaceutical unit moved into his previous job as corporate treasurer.

As treasurer, Gomez led the $5 billion spin-off of Cardinal Health's medical technologies unit, CareFusion. The company decided the unit, with $4 billion in sales, was not a good fit with its strategic plan: to boost its credit ratings significantly and focus more on the drug distribution business, while increasing the company's dividend and making it more of a value, growth and income play for investors at the same time.