High turnover of chief financial officer turnover is now a fact of corporate life. But a growing number are now jumping ship, according to Reuters.

According to the news report, 2300 CFOs of public companies in the United States and Canada headed for the exit door last year, compared with about 1870 in 2005. Just another thing to blame on Sarbanes-Oxley.

As Cindie Jamison, national director of CFO services at Tatum LLC, an executive services firm told Reuters: "The job of the CFO has never been harder. Government regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley and unrelenting pressures from CEOs and boards are making life Miserable for many CFOs," said Jamison. "We'll continue to see high CFO turnover until CEOs and boards realize the position is no longer a one-person job. Today's CFO needs a team of experts."

At the same time, however, Sarbanes-Oxley has transformed the role of the CFO into that of a strategic partner.

I suspect however what we are seeing is something that reflects a broader change in the market. There seems to be a growing subset of guns-for-hire, CFOs specialising in short stints.

This is particularly true for the bank CFOs, reports TheStreet.com.

And at a time when mergers and acquisitions are running hot, most companies today would have exit strategies where the CFO's job is going to be eliminated.

Still for those who stay, the money continues to roll in with CFOs in the US getting massive increases, according to CFO Asia.com

And then, there are those millions coming in from options. Coming in so much that Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Mark Everson wants to ban them from getting any.

And with CFO churn continuing to accelerate, you can expect those payouts to get bigger.