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Tag: CFO

  • How Making This Critical Hire Will Improve Your Franchise | Entrepreneur

    How Making This Critical Hire Will Improve Your Franchise | Entrepreneur

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Many franchise founders (and even multi-unit franchisees) hope to one day sell their businesses to private equity. PE’s significant interest in the franchise sector is undeniable. Sellers have benefitted from the activity of these well-capitalized buyers through added deal competition and increasing prices. Even in our current market where valuations have cooled from the heady prices of late 2021 and early 2022, multiples for great franchise businesses are still strong and often exceed middle-market averages for similar-sized companies.

    No matter what your long-term objectives are, it is important to maintain a sale-ready stance as much as possible. This doesn’t just mean keeping your documentation up to date and refreshing an online data room with updated financials and franchise documentation — that’s a given. More important is having the right finance leader in place to be a strategic thought partner both to you as the founder and to your franchisees.

    This makes your Chief Financial Officer one of the most important roles in your business. It’s also a role that, especially for emerging brands, can be one of the weakest in the organization. Bootstrapped companies may not be able to afford top financial management. When private equity later comes calling, immaturity in that role specifically decreases buyers’ willingness to pay because of all the downstream impacts a vacuum in that key position creates in how the business itself is managed.

    Today’s franchise marketplace is extremely competitive for new brands. It is more expensive than ever to launch and create enough visibility to recruit top franchisee candidates. Emerging brands end up stuck in an expensive competition that often leads them to make heavy investments in franchise marketing and recruiting, including high-cost external sales channels. Little may be left over for support infrastructure, including the finance department.

    It is difficult to recruit top finance talent as a small franchisor. Small franchisors may not even have the capacity to collect and meaningfully analyze franchisee P&Ls. Without this visibility, the franchisor can’t properly track or support system health. How will your operations team know what they should be focused on during franchisee coaching conversations? How can your team create and share reports with franchisees demonstrating key metrics and the impact on profitability?

    Related: 4 Key Functions of a Chief Financial Officer

    How a strong CFO can improve your franchise

    Key areas where a strong CFO can improve your business value and exit options include:

    • Strategic thought partner for the entire management team

    • Maintain focus on corporate and unit-level profitability and growth

    • Guide the creation of training materials to help franchisees improve their financial acumen and manage a more profitable business

    • Financial modeling and scenario planning that ensures resources are invested in the highest pay-back initiatives

    • Ensure data reliability and create a cadence for collecting and analyzing business financials

    • Drive supply chain improvements and better vendor pricing

    • Evaluate debt options to fund growth and delay taking on a private equity partner

    • Establish lending programs to support franchisee expansion

    • Team leadership; build financial acumen across the business

    • Support for operations team; track operational KPIs back to financial impact at both the franchisor- and franchisee-level

    • Work with the operations team to establish a common chart of accounts for franchisees and support mechanism for ongoing profitability coaching

    Sometimes emerging franchisors try to “save money” by under-hiring for this key position. Don’t make this mistake! I recognize that for smaller brands, this is an expensive hire. Find the very best talent you can afford, and consider the ultimate payback. One strategy is to hire a fractional CFO and complement that talent with in-house administrative support until the business is large enough to comfortably afford a full-time hire.

    If you are positioning your business for an eventual sale to private equity, the CFO role is ironically most at risk. PE firms typically either have financial resources in-house or outside executives they know and are comfortable with. In the case of a platform, financial planning and reporting functions may already be consolidated. Either way, while the CFO is a key enabling role to help create a sale-ready stance and drive higher enterprise value, ironically, it may be the first position to be replaced or eliminated post-acquisition. You may need to get creative with compensation, such as creating a bonus structure in the event of a successful transaction, in order to recruit the best talent.

    Related: 3 Signs It’s Time to Hire a CFO

    Key attributes in emerging franchise CFO hire

    • Previous senior finance leadership experience — minimum 5 years

    • Strong references, especially as a strategic thought partner for the founder, senior team and franchisees

    • Experience working with private equity, preferably as CFO or VP of Finance for a brand that was sold to private equity or owned by private equity

    • Experience working in a startup environment

    • Franchise or multi-unit experience is a plus

    • Accounting background preferred over finance background

    • Good financial modeling skills

    • Experience at one of the large accounting firms is a plus

    • Ability to build a strong, profit-focused team

    If your franchise system is primarily first-time business owners, make financial acumen at the operating level a priority for your finance lead in partnership with your operations lead. A strong CFO can assist operations to develop tools and coaching that help franchisees understand the major financial levers in their business and key activities that improve profitability.

    Don’t wait until you’re selling the business for prospective buyers to point out all the low-hanging fruit that you could have captured and monetized yourself by helping franchisees improve their businesses. Strong attention to unit-level profitability also signals to franchisees that their profitability is a priority for your management team. This should attract better franchisees in the first place and validate well.

    Related: The CFO Of The Future (No, They Are Not Just The “Finance Guy”)

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    Alicia Miller

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  • Mass layoffs are terrible for shareholders, a study finds

    Mass layoffs are terrible for shareholders, a study finds

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    Do mass layoffs reflect poor management? That’s up for debate. But a new analysis suggests the practice harms shareholder returns, and companies should instead consider tactics like a four-day workweek to cut costs.

    CFOs tend to underestimate the “organizational drag” that’s created as a result of layoffs, according to the research and advisory firm Gartner. This can inadvertently reduce shareholder returns in the long term instead of protecting them, an analysis finds.

    “The first thing to recognize is that there is an immediate upfront cost to layoffs as a business will need to reorganize itself around a smaller group of employees and typically incur costly upfront severance payments,” Vaughan Archer, senior director of research and advisory in the Gartner Finance practice, said in a statement. And what will follow is an increased need for contractor hiring, which can be costly, and remaining employees have a ton of more work and more demands for increased compensation, according to Archer.

    Within three years, the forecasted savings from layoffs tend to become offset by the unforeseen consequences, Gartner said. Even if a business avoids “a vicious cycle of employee turnover” driven by overworked staff and low morale, any cost savings from layoffs will likely be lost. And when businesses start to rehire at some point, it will likely be at higher rates than the employees who were laid off.

    “In the more negative scenarios, the factors detailed here are also going to harm growth in existing and new business, and ultimately a firm will start losing its customers,” Archer said.

    Four days instead of five

    A four-day workweek is one of the 10 cost savings actions companies can take instead of mass layoffs, Gartner suggests. Trimming the traditional workweek model to four days is “not about cutting pay, but may control pay growth and staff turnover as employees find better work-life balance and increased productivity as burnout is reduced,” the firm noted.

    This work dynamic has certainly been a hot topic of discussion. Monster conducted a survey of 868 workers in March focusing on work productivity. Sixty-one percent said they’d rather have a four-day workweek and 33% say they’d leave their job for one with a shortened week. 

    Britain announced in February the results of the world’s biggest trial of a four-day working week, Fortune reported. The six-month pilot included over 60 companies and just under 3,000 to feedback on the “100:80:100” working model: 100% pay for 80% of the time, in exchange for 100% productivity. The results included a 65% reduction in the number of sick days, maintained or improved productivity at most businesses, and a 57% decline in the likelihood that a worker would quit, improving job retention.

    Andrew Barnes is the cofounder of the nonprofit 4 Day Week Global, helping organizations in various countries, including the U.K., pilot shorter schedules. Barnes also owns Perpetual Guardian, one of New Zealand’s largest corporate trustee companies. During MIT Sloan Management Review’s virtual summit on May 4, he talked about his company’s experience. 

    “We implemented the four-day workweek five years ago,” he said. “We’re twice as productive on a per capita basis now as our nearest competitor. We’re not seeing any adverse impacts.”

    Voluntary reduction in hours, internal redeployment, reducing executive compensation, remote work, voluntary leave of absence, a hiring freeze, benefit cuts, organization-wide pay cuts, and sabbaticals are the other options companies can take instead of mass layoffs, Gartner advises.

    If the livelihood and well-being of employees and shareholder returns are on the line, there’s a lot to consider before deciding on a major workforce reduction.

    Sheryl Estrada
    sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

    Big deal

    Microsoft has released its 2023 Work Trend Index report, “Will AI Fix Work?” The pace of work has accelerated faster than humans can keep up, and it’s impacting innovation, according to the report. “This new generation of A.I. will remove the drudgery of work and unleash creativity,” Satya Nadella, Microsoft chairman and CEO, said in a statement. The report shares three key insights for business leaders: digital debt is costing innovation, there’s a new A.I.-employee alliance, and every employee needs A.I. aptitude.

    Amid fears of A.I. job loss, when asked what they would most value A.I. for, business leaders were two times more likely to choose “increasing employee productivity” (31%) than “reducing headcount” (16%).

    The findings are based on 31,000 people in 31 countries, an analysis of both Microsoft 365 productivity signals, and labor trends from the LinkedIn Economic Graph.

    Going deeper

    “A.I. Can Be Both Accurate and Transparent,” a new report in Harvard Business Review, examines the question: Is there always a tradeoff between accuracy and explainability in artificial intelligence? The research tested a wide array of A.I. models on nearly 100 representative datasets and found that 70% of the time, a more-explainable model could be used without sacrificing accuracy. In many applications, less transparent models come with substantial downsides related to bias, equity, and user trust, according to the report.

    Leaderboard

    Sarah Wells was promoted to CFO at Spruce Power Holding Corporation (NYSE: SPRU), an owner and operator of distributed solar energy assets across the U.S., effective May 19. Wells succeeds Don Klein, who is departing in connection with the previously announced transition from XL Fleet to Spruce Power executive management. She joined Spruce Power in 2018, and most recently served as SVP of finance and accounting and head of sustainability. Before joining the company, she held various financial roles including finance and SOX manager at Cornerstone Building Brands (formerly NCI Building Systems, Inc.). Earlier in her career, Wells served as a senior auditor at PKF Texas.

    William Bardeen was promoted to EVP and CFO at The New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT), effective July 1. Roland A. Caputo, who announced his planned retirement as CFO in December 2022, will remain with the company through Sept. 30 for a transition period. Bardeen, 48, joined The New York Times Company in 2004. He’s served as chief strategy officer since 2018, also overseeing investor relations on an interim basis since March. Before that, he was SVP of strategy and development from 2013 to 2018. Bardeen has also served in various other leadership roles at The Times in corporate development, business development, and strategic planning. Before joining the company, he was a management consultant.

    Overheard

    “My personal belief is it will be like that movie Her with Scarlett Johansson and Joaquin Phoenix: Humans are a bit boring, and it’ll be like, ‘Goodbye’ and ‘You’re kind of boring.’”

    —Emad Mostaque, CEO of the fast-growing London-based startup Stability AI, which popularized the text-t0-image generator Stable Diffusion, hopes A.I. will find us “a bit boring” but acknowledges that in the worst-case scenario it “basically controls humanity,” he told BBC in an interview. 

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    Sheryl Estrada

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  • What makes an award-winning board? This CFO and director says its leadership and culture

    What makes an award-winning board? This CFO and director says its leadership and culture

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    This week, Fortune released its Modern Board 25 list that features the most innovative boards of directors among S&P 500 companies. Marie Myers, CFO at HP Inc., is on the board of F5, a Seattle-based cyber security and application delivery firm, which earned the No. 1 spot on the list.

    Myers isn’t on HP’s board of directors, which earned the No. 7 spot, but as CFO, she regularly interacts with the board. The Modern Board’s ranking is based on criteria including the expertise, independence, diversity, and tenure of board membership. Myers shares with me her perspective on why both boards work so well.

    “I believe leadership and culture are what make F5 and its board so effective, and those traits are what first drew me to joining its board,” says Myers, who joined in January 2019. “CEO Francois Locoh-Donou is a phenomenal leader, as is Alan Higginson, the chairman of the board. Together they have built a board that reflects the company F5 aims to be. It’s not just what it does, but also how it does it.”

    She continues, “F5’s human-first and high-performing culture fosters inclusivity and purpose among employees and the board. A lot of companies strive to be inclusive, but at F5 it happens naturally.”

    There’s also a high degree of collaboration between the board and the leadership team, and chemistry is a factor, Myers says. “Chemistry is why the board and leadership come together organically outside of the normal schedule of board meetings to discuss evolving situations and tackle complex business matters,” she says.

    A combination of her experience, “passion for digital transformation,” and financial acumen, have all been especially useful in the director role, Myers explains. “Similarly, having the opportunity to participate in several large-scale transformations in my career provides a great foundation to navigate the broader environment at the board level,” she says.

    ‘CFOs need to be knowledgeable about all aspects of the business’

    Myers, who has nearly 25 years of experience at HP, became the tech giant’s acting CFO in 2020 and was named CFO in 2021. Before being named CFO, Myers served as HP’s chief transformation officer, where she led the company’s IT and Transformation organizations.

    “I’ve always been proud of the fact that HP’s board is one of the most diverse in the technology industry,” Myers says. “There is a broad mix of gender, age, ethnicity, and experience. This brings diversity of thought to every discussion and challenge the board and our company faces.” There’s chemistry among HP’s board and leadership team, as well, she says.

    Any advice for CFOs when forging a relationship with the board? “The role of the CFO is evolving beyond traditional finance and accounting boundaries,” Myers explains. “For example, leveraging data and analytics to become more strategic advisors and partners to the business. This is also true of CFO interactions with the board.”

    She continues, “I think it’s important to establish a direct and collaborative relationship with board members. Today’s CFOs need to be knowledgeable about all aspects of the business, have a broad and informed view of the company, and share their unique insights with the board, not just financials.”

    Her most important advice: “Above all, CFOs need to communicate with transparency and always act with integrity to build trust and credibility with the board,” Myers says.

    Enjoy your weekend, and have a Happy Mother’s Day. See you on Monday.

    Sheryl Estrada
    sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

    Big deal

    Gallup released a report on Thursday regarding Americans’ perceptions of the best long-term investment, and gold is perceived to have more value than stocks. Real estate came in first as the best bet for a long-term investment (34%). This is down from last year’s record-high of 45%. “Higher interest rates over the past year have cooled the housing market, dampening consumer exuberance about real estate as an investment,” according to Gallup.

    The perception that gold is best increased from 15% in 2022 to 26% today. As a result, gold has overtaken stocks for second position. This year, fewer Americans (18%) than in 2022 (24%) see stocks or mutual funds as the best investment due to U.S. stock indices failing to gain ground over the past year. Today’s preference for stocks is on the low end of the 17% to 27% range of Americans choosing it since 2011, the research found. The latest poll was conducted April 3-25.

    Courtesy of Gallup

    Going deeper

    Here are a few Fortune weekend reads:

    “The next CEO of Twitter, replacing Elon Musk, could be this NBC ad executive—or one of these other high-powered woman execs” by Andrea Guzman and Kylie Robison

    “Former FTX chief compliance officer cooperating in crypto lawsuit against Tom Brady, Shaq and celebrity promoters” by Shawn Tully

    “Jamie Dimon says he won’t be buying any more failed banks: ‘It’s a lot of work’” by Will Daniel 

    “Doing an art activity for just 20 minutes can help you live longer. Here are easy ways to add it into your day” by Alexa Mikhail

    Leaderboard

    Here’s a list of some notable moves this week:

    Cathy R. Smith was named CFO at Nordstrom, Inc. (NYSE: JWN), effective May 29. Smith joins Nordstrom from Bright Health Group, where she has served as chief financial and administrative officer since 2020. Before Bright Health, Smith worked as the CFO for Target Corporation for five years. During that time, Target achieved double-digit revenue and EPS growth. Before Target, Smith served as CFO for public companies Express Scripts, Walmart International, Gamestop, Centex, Kennametal, Textron, and Raytheon.

    James “Jay” Saccaro was named VP and CFO at GE HealthCare (Nasdaq: GEHC), effective June 1. Saccaro succeeds Helmut Zodl who is remaining with the company to lead special projects regarding separation from GE. Saccaro joins GE HealthCare from Baxter International, where he has been serving as EVP and CFO since 2015. Before rejoining Baxter, he was SVP and CFO at Hill-Rom Corporation. 

    Todd Tuckner was named Group CFO at UBS. Tuckner will take on the role at the close of the acquisition of Credit Suisse. Having joined UBS in 2004, Tuckner is currently CFO and head of business performance and risk management for Global Wealth Management. Tuckner will succeed Sarah Youngwood, who has decided to leave the firm after the transaction closes. Youngwood joined UBS in 2022.

    Kapil Agrawal was named CFO at Outschool, an education platform that offers a variety of small-group classes online. Agrawal brings experience in finance and international expansion. Most recently, he served as interim CFO at Poshmark. He was also pivotal in improving Poshmark’s gross margins, unit economics, and profitability. Before Poshmark, Agrawal served as global head of pricing at Uber Technologies, and head of business strategy at Capital One.

    Gayle Jardine was named interim CFO at Coda Octopus Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: CODA), a real-time 3D/4D/5D and 6D imaging sonar technology company, effective May 4. The company’s CFO, Nathan Parker, has departed from his role, effective May 3. Jardine joined Coda Octopus Group as its European director of finance in 2015. Before that, she was the owner and director of Pentland Accounting Limited. Jardine also previously served as the operations and finance manager for Wireless Fibre Systems. 

    Howard Fu was promoted to CFO and treasurer at Procore Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: PCOR), a global provider of construction management software, effective May 8. After four years as CFO and treasurer at Procore, Paul Lyandres is stepping into the newly-created president. Fu most recently served as SVP of finance at Procore for two years. Previously, Fu served as VP of financial planning and analysis at DocuSign. Before that, he led the sales finance and M&A finance teams at Salesforce.

    Marcus Glover was named EVP and CFO at Bally’s Corporation (NYSE: BALY). Bobby Lavan, Bally’s current CFO, will be leaving the company to pursue another opportunity. Most recently, Glover served as chief strategy officer for QPSI LLC, a supply chain solutions and contract packaging company. Before that, he served as president and COO of the Borgata Hotel, Casino & Spa, and president and COO of the Beau Rivage Resort & Casino. Glover was also a senior executive with Caesars Entertainment in various positions, including SVP and general manager for the Horseshoe Casino and Thistledown Racino, assistant general manager at Harrah’s/Caesars Entertainment St. Louis, Mo., and VP of operations at Harrah’s/Caesars Entertainment in Biloxi, Miss.

    Gary W. Ferrera was named EVP and CFO at Driven Brands Holdings Inc. (Nasdaq: DRVN), an automotive services company, effective May 10. Ferrera succeeds Tiffany Mason. Most recently, Ferrera served as the CFO of Skillsoft Corporation, an educational software company. Before Skillsoft, he spent four years as the CFO of Cardtronics, PLC, an owner/operator of ATMs. He also served as CFO at DigitalGlobe, Inc., Intrawest Resorts Holdings, Inc., Great Wolf Resorts, Inc., National CineMedia, Inc., and Unity Media. 

    Overheard

    “Sadly, the Great Resignation is not over for mothers. The fact that a significant percentage of mothers are leaving the workforce or changing jobs due to the lack of affordable childcare and the need to stay at home with their children is concerning.”

    —Jill Koziol, Motherly CEO and cofounder, told Fortune in an interview. Motherly’s recent State of Motherhood report surveyed nearly 10,000 mothers. Eighteen percent of mothers changed jobs or completely left the workforce this past year; 28% said they wanted to stay home with the kids, and 15% said they didn’t have childcare options, the research found. For 64% of at-home moms, flexible work schedules would get them to return to the workforce. And 52% said affordable childcare would.

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    Sheryl Estrada

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  • How the workforce of the future will be more like an ‘ecosystem’

    How the workforce of the future will be more like an ‘ecosystem’

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    CFOs have become central in steering business strategy and value creation. But that task is about to get a lot more comprehensive in scale.

    The workforce is changing into an ecosystem, consisting of full- and part-time employees, but also includes robots, chatbots, contractors, gig workers, professional service firms, app developers, and even customers. These internal and external elements all contribute to an organization’s value creation and strategic goals, according to the new book, Workforce Ecosystems: Reaching Strategic Goals with People, Partners, and Technologies.

    Two of the authors explained their research on Thursday during MIT Sloan Management Review’s (SMR) virtual summit on the future of work. “When Amazon decided it wanted to have its own transportation system, it didn’t hire people,” said Elizabeth J. Altman, coauthor and an associate professor of management in the Manning School of Business at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. “It started subcontracting, often with mom and pops. These people add value to Amazon, but don’t work for Amazon.”

    She continued, “If you think about YouTube or TikTok, those content creators are contributing to the business in a very meaningful way, and enabling the business to go forward. For many platform businesses that rely on contributions from users, those users absolutely, in my mind, are part of the workforce ecosystem.” However, “the relationship between the company and their customers or contributors is a little more complex than it was when a company was just selling a product to customers,” Altman said.

    The years of research culminating in a book included global surveys of more than 10,000 business leaders across industries, and more than 100 executive interviews, with 26% of the businesses surveyed earning more than $1 billion in revenue. 

    When external contributors are considered to be part of an organization’s workforce, that’s “a non-trivial shift,” said David Kiron, a coauthor and editorial director of MIT SMR. “It’s so nontrivial that three-quarters of managers agree that effectively managing these external folks is critical to their organization’s success,” Kiron said. “It’s especially true for organizations like Cisco and Novartis, and some of these other organizations that have tens of thousands of external contributors getting the work done.” 

    However, based on their research, just 30% of business leaders agreed that their organization is sufficiently prepared to manage a workforce that relies on all of these external contributors. “Those leaders who are taking this issue seriously consider it to be a holy grail, or a potential strategic differentiator for them to figure this problem out,” Kiron said. 

    Regarding a workforce ecosystem framework, four vital themes emerged in their research: management practices, technology enablers, integration architectures, and leadership approaches. Senior leaders and business unit leaders have to manage these themes. And the departments—HR, procurement, finance, legal, and IT—closely collaborate in a cross-functional approach for the workforce, internally and externally. There can’t be departmental silos in this approach. 

    However, a workforce ecosystem comes with challenges like issues of ethics, compliance, and regulatory matters. “The third part of the book is about ethics and social responsibilities and corporate social responsibility,” Altman explained. “We’re very aware that this structure leads to all kinds of questions. Like, who owns the intellectual property, for example. That is an ongoing discussion. There are different mechanisms for working with it. It’s not that it hasn’t been addressed at all, but I think these discussions continue to evolve as workforce ecosystems become more prevalent.”

    In a workforce ecosystem, I asked the authors if company strategy and value creation ultimately fall under the purview of the CEO and CFO. “We have realized that these discussions move to the C-suite,” Altman said. “They are strategic conversations because they get to the heart of how organizations compete [in their] industry, how they develop new products and services and move into new markets. So yes, ultimately, we think this is a very cross-functional C-level discussion. But we also see it going down deep into an organization.”

    A workforce redefined, for sure.

    Enjoy your weekend. See you on Monday.

    Sheryl Estrada
    sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

    Big deal

    The “Nasdaq 2023 ESG & Climate Survey” is based on feedback from executives in North America and Europe. Companies of varying maturity levels report they are leaning in on sustainability initiatives despite an unclear path forward and with regulation looming on the horizon. Forty-five percent of companies have been tackling ESG strategy for fewer than three years, and 9% of companies have been tackling ESG for more than five years. As companies advance in their journey, teams grow and become more integrated into day-to-day operations and decision-making.

    When asked how the most senior team member responsible for ESG and sustainability was appointed, 47% of executives said the person voluntarily took on responsibilities on top of their own role. Meanwhile, 39% said the team member migrated internally from other teams, and 14% said the person was hired for the role.

    Courtesy of Nasdaq

    Going deeper

    Here are a few Fortune weekend reads:

    “A famous hedge fund chief who managed to net record returns as stocks fell in 2022 says investors should look abroad to profit” by Will Daniel

    “Frank founder sued by JPMorgan for making up customers is in talks with DOJ over fraud charges” by Luisa Beltran

    “Airbnb’s CEO spent 6 months living in his company’s rentals—and found the core problem with his business” by Trey Williams

    “7 ways to bounce back after a bad night’s sleep” by Alexa Mikhail

    Leaderboard

    Here’s a list of some notable moves this week:

    Markus Neubrand was named CFO at Guess?, Inc. (NYSE: GES), effective Aug. 1. Neubrand will succeed interim CFO Dennis Secor. Neubrand currently serves as group CFO of luxury fashion brand MCM Worldwide. Before that, he spent 17 years at Hugo Boss, in roles including managing director of Scandinavia, and group director of financial planning, then COO and CFO. 

    Teresa Chia was named CFO at Vertafore, an insurance technology company. Before joining Vertafore, Chia was a senior partner and managing director at White Mountains Insurance Group, a publicly traded holding company. She was responsible for White Mountains’ direct investing and corporate mergers and acquisitions activity. Before that, Chia was a private equity investor at Permira Advisors, where she focused on investments in the global technology and consumer verticals.

    Tim MacCarrick was named CFO at project44, a supply chain visibility platform. MacCarrick has over 25 years of senior executive experience in finance and operations roles. He’s held both COO and CFO roles at public and private companies including Qlik, Xerox, DLL, and most recently OutSystems. 

    Patricia Kaelin was named CFO at Safe & Green Holdings Corp.(Nasdaq: SGBX), a developer, designer, and fabricator of modular structures, effective May 2. Kaelin served as CFO of Buddies Brand, a privately held consumer packaged goods (CPG) company. Before that, she served as CFO of 1933 Industries, Inc., a publicly traded CPG company. Kaelin also served as CFO of business operations at Clifton Larson Allen, a CPA and consulting firm. 

    Jay Matushak was named CFO at Bright Health Group, Inc. (NYSE: BHG), the technology-enabled health care company, effective May 12. Matushak will succeed Cathy Smith, who is stepping down to pursue another opportunity. Matushak joined Bright Health in 2021. He currently serves as SVP of finance. Matushak also serves as CFO of Bright HealthCare, the company’s insurance business. 

    Michael Dougherty was named CFO at bioAffinity Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: BIAF; BIAFW), a biotechnology company. Most recently, Dougherty served as CFO of Alexa Business Domains, Amazon’s Alexa AI and Voice division. Before that, Dougherty was chief financial and operating officer of TINT and CFO at Filestack. He also previously served as CFO for Amazon Pay. 

    David Black was named CFO at Proterra Inc. (Nasdaq: PTRA), a commercial vehicle electrification technology company, effective May 16. Karina Padilla, the current CFO, will step down from her role, effective May 15. Black served as a special advisor to the CEO of BWX Technologies, a supplier of nuclear components and fuel to the U.S. government. Before that, he served as SVP and CFO of BWX Technologies. 

    Overheard

    “We continue to see our customers return to us for reasons of the product innovation…in areas like refreshers, iced shaken espresso, cold foam, those are difficult to make at home, they give customers a reason to come in.”

    —Starbucks CFO Rachel Ruggeri told Yahoo Finance.  

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    Sheryl Estrada

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  • ‘Anything to survive’: How one leader is pushing ahead

    ‘Anything to survive’: How one leader is pushing ahead

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    The CEO of Evofem Biosciences is managing through a crushing debt load, Nasdaq delisting, and sweeping layoffs. Read More

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    Maria Aspan, Sheryl Estrada

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  • How companies can recruit ’10x’ employees

    How companies can recruit ’10x’ employees

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    Lucy Brewster here, filling in for Sheryl. Typically, there are effective employees, there are good ones, and then there are the coveted few who are indispensable. As startups look to cut costs amid the bank failures and economic anxiety, having one or two leaders that stand out can make or break the enterprise.

    So, what separates top-tier talent from the pack? The phrase “10x employee” has been used in Silicon Valley for years, often referring to engineers, to describe employees that produce far more results than the “average” employee. Yet experts explained that truly coveted employees aren’t “lone wolf” types who have their heads down working all day; they stand out because of their collaborative team work and contribution to a positive work culture. The most in-demand employees have a combination of highly skilled technical skills and valuable soft skills. “It could be someone’s domain expertise, such as cybersecurity or fintech [that makes them unique],” said Bryan Powell, operating partner of talent at Insight Partners, who advises Insight’s startups on how to build their teams. “These people bring the team along and win together, but not at the cost of others.”

    “Even amidst all these layoffs, there still is this cluster of people in different categories within any industry sector that are still in high demand because they have leadership capability, they’re adaptable, and they move the organization forward,” said Tammy Madsen, professor of management at Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business

    Catching these employees’ attention is an ongoing hustle for executives, even in a labor market that favors those hiring. While the recent Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey showed a slight decline in job openings from 10.6 million to 9.9 million, the competition for the very top employees remains cutthroat, especially for startups trying to poach talent from seasoned tech giants. “Whether you’re recruiting in a hot market or a cold market, top talent has choices,” explained Powell. 

    Madsen notes that beyond salary and perks, people are looking to align themselves with a company that sees them as a whole person. “We’re recovering from about three years of uncertainty that came with many employees being concerned about their health and job security,” she explained. “Thinking about that group that has bargaining power in this space as the top tier of a particular software category or finance category, wherever they go, intrinsic rewards become more important than extrinsic rewards,” she said.

    Employees who are in high demand likely won’t be responding to generic job opening posts, either. “Building trust with top talent is of paramount importance—you can’t send these individuals generic LinkedIn messages and hope for the best,” explained Powell. “By making a connection and trying to understand what they want, by truly listening and then presenting opportunities that match their career interests—that is how you attract these high-level employees,” Powell added. For example, many software developers want to solve unique technical problems and challenges. So when you’re recruiting, that should be highlighted, Powell explained. “Companies need to reflect inward and ask, ‘Do we have a strong value system inside the company? Is the mission clear? Is the work interesting?’”

    Great company culture also means an executive team that is committed to setting and meeting their goals to be an equitable and diverse workplace. “Diversity builds the best teams and culture, so it needs to be put into practice—not just words,” said Powell. (Yesterday, I spoke to an expert about how the importance of building an equitable pay structure.)

    For newer startups, you’re competing for software talent with companies with strong brand legacies, and you have to find a way to create a positive impression as a newer player. “You also can’t ignore the importance of a strong employer brand—especially if you don’t have broad brand recognition like a Meta, Amazon, or Salesforce,” Powell said. 

    Many of the companies with top-tier employees have the most robust training and career advancement opportunities internally—which is not a coincidence. While some employees have technical skills that are hard to come by, soft skills are equally, if not more, valuable. “Organizations making ongoing learning a priority is important for new hires and critical, both in rescaling and upskilling,” Madsen said.

    Lucy Brewster

    Twitter: @lucyrbrewster
    Email: Lucille.Brewster@fortune.com

    Big deal

    You’ve likely heard the notion that the cause of the ongoing pay gap between women and men is that women aren’t as assertive as men when negotiating their salaries. Well, according to a new survey from the Pew Research Center, only a minority of people, regardless of gender, actually ask for higher pay. While slightly more men than women asked for a higher salary the last time they were hired (32% of men compared to 28% of women), more women reported getting denied and offered the original pay after asking for a raise (38% of women versus 31% of men). Age arguably played a significant role in whether employees negotiated salaries or not, with 46% of workers aged 18-29 reporting they didn’t feel comfortable asking for higher pay. 

    Going deeper

    Fresh snow, mediation sessions with Jeff Bezos, and “surprise” mountain lions—these are the experiences that make a $40-million utopia. Well, that’s if your idea of paradise is “TED meets Burning Man.” In her latest magazine feature, Fortune’s Lila MacLellan tells the story of how plans for Summit Powder Mountain, led by founders Elliott Bisnow, Brett Leve, Jeff Rosenthal, and Jeremy Schwartz went from a lofty vision of a VC-backed, futuristic winter wonderland to its reality—a few half constructed houses at high altitude. In 2013, the founders of the popular, exclusive Summit Conference series decided to buy a ski mountain for $40 million with the grandiose intention of building a self-sustaining community of other Silicon Valley regulars and celebrities, changing the world one wellness ritual at a time. Things didn’t go as planned. Read Lila’s story here to see how it all went down. 

    Leaderboard

    Grant E. Fitz has been named CFO of manufacturing giant Myers Industries (NYSE:MYE). He will replace interim CFO Monica Vinay effective May 8. Fitz has over three decades of operational and financial experience, including a tenure as an executive at General Motors. He was previously the CFO of tech company EFI before joining Myers Industries. 

    Eric Williams has been named CFO of commercial space technology company Momentus Inc (NASDAQ: MNTS). He will take over from interim CFO Dennis Mahoney. Williams has over fifteen years of financial operations experience at various tech companies. 

    Overheard

    “We won—but we came out of that broke.” 

    —Al Altomari, CEO of Agile Therapeutics told Fortune‘s Maria Aspan, explaining that he had to spend about $250 million to get birth control drug Twirla approved by the FDA. Read the rest of Maria Aspen’s feature about the dysfunctional birth control market here.

    This is the web version of CFO Daily, a newsletter on the trends and individuals shaping corporate finance. Sign up to get CFO Daily delivered free to your inbox.

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    Lucy Brewster

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  • A major bank has banned ChatGPT—should your company follow suit?

    A major bank has banned ChatGPT—should your company follow suit?

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    Finance and artificial intelligence aren’t like oil and water. There are areas where the two mix, like expense reporting. But when it comes to generative-A.I. applications such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, a financial institution is taking a pass.

    This week, there have been reports that JPMorgan Chase & Co. is restricting staff from using the ChatGPT chatbot. The firm’s mandate wasn’t made in response to a certain event but part of standard controls for third-party software usage, the Telegraph first reported. JPMorgan didn’t immediately respond to my request for comment. 

    Launched in November by OpenAI, ChatGPT is a chatbot that can answer questions and can generate content on any topic you can think of, and even write articles. It’s trained to follow language and thought patterns like humans. (Read more about OpenAI founder Sam Altman here.)

    To discuss ChatGPT in the workplace, I had a chat with Vikram R. Bhargava, assistant professor of strategic management and public policy at the George Washington University School of Business, who conducts research on A.I. and the future of work.

    “I think that a lot of us, including people working in finance, were sort of stunned by the performance of ChatGPT when we first started playing around with it,” Bhargava says. “A number of employees and even banks might be tempted to use these tools to make their life a little easier,” he says. For example, asking it to come up with a relevant Excel formula for a modeling task that an analyst or an associate might do, he explains. But not fully knowing how the technology operates, “does create a little bit of discomfort in heavily relying on it,” he says.

    “The thing with banking, of course, is that it’s a very heavily regulated industry, and this technology is also new to regulators,” Bhargava says. Along those lines, Mira Murati, chief technology officer at OpenAI, told Time in a recent interview that regulators will need to get involved with ChatGPT and govern the use of A.I. in a way that’s “aligned with human values.”

    “I don’t know the specifics of the rationale behind JPMorgan’s decision, but it does strike me as prudent,” Bhargava says. “This technology is rapidly evolving. One of the difficulties is—what might be true of ChatGPT as it stands, might not be true in three months.”

    JPMorgan isn’t a novice when it comes to A.I. The bank recently ranked No. 1 in data intelligence startup Evident’s A.I. Index, the first public benchmark of the major banks on their artificial intelligence maturity. The index covers the largest 23 banks in North America and Europe. JPMorgan spends $14 billion in technology annually, of which approximately half is dedicated to investments, the firm said in an announcement.  

    “Leading in A.I. and knowing how to use A.I. responsibly, sometimes might require the firm to abstain from using the given technology,” Bhargava says. 

    Michael Schrage, a research fellow at the MIT Sloan School Initiative on the Digital Economy, spoke with finance chiefs at Fortune’s CFO Collaborative event in January about the possibilities of generative A.I. in finance. I asked him his thoughts on JPMorgan’s reported restriction.

    Schrage says he’s not certain how OpenAI currently manages, collects, and analyzes “prompts” (how you get ChatGPT to do what you want). But he suggests prompts may be an issue for a bank concerned about privacy rules, compliance, and proprietary processes. Prompts that are too detailed may inadvertently reveal information that the bank or its clients would prefer not to be shared, Schrage says.

    “In the same way that Google and Bing know what topics, themes, and names are being searched, it’s similarly probable that OpenAI is tracking the level of detail and specificity of prompts,” he says.

    Again, Schrage is not sure of how OpenAI handles and tracks prompts, but says: “It’s easy to imagine and enact ways where prompts can be anonymized, aggregated, masked, and shielded to minimize revealing sensitive information while still getting good ‘generative advice’ and insight.” I reached out to OpenAI to ask about prompts, but haven’t received a response.

    Many CFOs are already cautious and experimenting with A.I. And, it will be some time before they’d feel comfortable incorporating ChatGPT, Alexander Bant, chief of research for CFOs at Gartner, recently told me. 

    What would make financial institutions more open to ChatGPT? “They need a little bit more security in knowing how the use of this technology interacts with the current regulatory environment,” Bhargava says. But are there perhaps some tasks where a company can experiment without being reprimanded by the Securities and Exchange Commission? 

    “Let’s say there’s an entry-level employee on your team who might not write the clearest, most concise emails,” Bhargava explains. “So, using ChatGPT might facilitate clearer communication.”

    The jury’s still out on applying ChatGPT in finance, but generative A.I. isn’t going anywhere.

    Have a good weekend. See you on Monday.

    Sheryl Estrada
    sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

    Big deal

    Hyperproof, a SaaS-based compliance and risk management company, has released its 2023 IT Compliance and Risk Benchmark Report. The company found that security, compliance, and risk management professionals were more concerned with short-term, immediate threats, as opposed to handling larger-scale decisions like long-term security issues. Respondents said their No. 1 concern was cybersecurity risks (36%), followed by third-party risk (29%), and lack of support and resources dedicated to IT risks and compliance (24%). The research also found that companies are poised and ready to level up their risk and compliance management processes in the coming years. 

    Going deeper

    Here are a few Fortune weekend reads:

    “The housing market correction has already caused homeowners to lose $2.3 trillion,” by Lance Lambert

    “These are the top cybersecurity startups to watch in 2023, according to VCs,” by Lucy Brewster

    “The ‘free money’ tech investment is over and the ‘old economy’ is set to become the big winner, according to Bank of America,” by Will Daniel

    “These 5 sleep habits could add 5 years to your life, say experts,” by L’Oreal Thompson Payton

    Leaderboard

    Here’s a list of some notable moves this week:

    Sandeep Singh Aujla was promoted to CFO at Intuit Inc. (Nasdaq: INTU), the global financial technology platform that makes TurboTax, Credit Karma, QuickBooks, and Mailchimp, effective Aug. 1. Aujla has held senior finance positions at Intuit for seven years and is currently the SVP of finance for Intuit’s largest business unit, the Small Business and Self-Employed Group (SBSEG), and for Intuit’s technology organization. Michelle Clatterbuck, who has served as CFO since February 2018, plans to step down as CFO on July 31.

    Joanne Knight was promoted to CFO at Cargill, a global food corporation that provides agricultural and financial services. Knight currently serves as Cargill’s acting CFO. Before this role, she was VP of finance for Cargill’s agriculture supply chain enterprise, including ocean transportation and the world trading group. Before Cargill, Knight spent 10 years in finance, marketing, and business leadership roles at General Mills that included P&L responsibility. She also held finance leadership roles at Wachovia.

    Robert Higginbotham was appointed interim CFO at Foot Locker, Inc., effective March 1, according to the company’s form 8-K filed on Feb. 21. Higginbotham will serve in this role in addition to his current duties as SVP of investor relations and financial planning and analysis, a role he began in December 2022. The company continues to conduct a search to identify a successor to current EVP and CFO Andrew E. Page who will depart on Feb. 28. Previously, Higginbotham served as VP of investor relations.

    Ryan Clemen was promoted to CFO at SelectQuote, Inc. (NYSE: SLQT), an insurance sales agency. Clement was named interim CFO in May 2022. Before joining SelectQuote in January 2022 as the SVP of financial planning and analysis, Clement served as the CFO of Sifted (formerly VeriShip). Before Sifted, Clemen spent seven years at Edelman Financial Engines, where he served in various senior-level finance and operational roles.

    David Rudow was named CFO at Unite Us, a software company enabling cross-sector collaboration. Rudow will lead the Unite Us finance organization. He served most recently as CFO at nCino taking the company public in 2020. For more than 20 years, Rudow served in senior leadership positions, including SVP at CentralSquare Technologies and senior analyst roles for several leading investment banking and asset management firms. 

    Kevin Schubert was named CFO at Rubicon Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: RBT), a digital marketplace for waste and recycling, effective immediately. In addition to his current responsibilities as president, Schubert will now oversee Rubicon’s end-to-end financial operations. Prior to serving as the company’s president, Schubert was Rubicon’s chief development officer. Before joining Rubicon, he held senior executive and advisory roles with public companies, most recently, CFO for Ocean Park Group.

    Overheard

    “I have all the respect for [Fed Chair Jerome] Powell, but the fact is we lost a little bit of control of inflation.”

    —JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said in an interview during CNBC’s Halftime Report.

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    Sheryl Estrada

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  • CFOs brace for a long and deep recession—in the U.K.

    CFOs brace for a long and deep recession—in the U.K.

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    With a looming recession in the U.K., debt finance is highly unattractive to CFOs.

    Some countries will be hit harder by a recession than others as the global economy is expected to contract this year, but the U.K. is in trouble. A Financial Times survey released on Monday found the U.K. is facing a “deeper and more prolonged recession” than any nation in the G7, a global policy forum representing seven of the world’s most advanced economies, Fortune reported. About four-fifths of economists said the U.K. will experience a much longer recession than its peers. They predict a rough 2023 and a potential return to normal by 2024.

    “The U.K. suffers from an energy shock as bad as Europe’s, an inflation problem…as bad as the U.S., and a unique problem of lack of labor supply from the combination of Brexit and the NHS crisis,” Ricardo Reis, a polled economist and professor at the London School of Economics, said in the report.

    Corporate distress has accelerated faster in the U.K. than in the rest of Europe and reached a two-year high, according to the recent Weil European Distress Index.

    A key finding of Deloitte’s UK CFO Q4 2022 survey released on Tuesday found CFOs view bank borrowing and debt issuance as the least attractive it has been since the financial crisis. As interest rates are at 3.5%, finance chiefs rate credit as being more expensive than at any time since 2009, according to the report.

    “When interest rates were at very low levels, debt finance easily eclipsed equity as a source of finance,” Ian Stewart, chief economist at Deloitte, said in a statement. “CFOs now see them as being roughly on par.”

    Seventy percent of CFOs rate credit as costly, meanwhile 45% say that new credit is hard to get. Just 28% say they expect their company’s demand for credit to increase over the coming 12 months. However, Stewart also noted that CFO “concerns about energy supply and prices have fallen back,” he said. The findings are based on a survey of 78 CFOs participated, including those at FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 companies.

    The Office for National Statistics reported last month that Britain’s inflation rate in November was 10.7% down from a 40-decade high of 11.1%. On average, CFOs  believe inflation will fall to 5.8% in a year’s time. However, in two-years, they expect it to stand at 3.3%, which is above the Bank of England’s 2% target. 

    In late September, the U.K. experienced market turmoil after government proposed tax-cutting plans sent bond and currency markets spiraling. If the U.K. markets are any indication, due to this macroenvironment, the era of putting in place fiscal stimulus, cutting taxes, and greatly replacing lost income without inflation or rising interest rates being a major concern could be over. A prolonged recession in the U.K. may have some implications for the U.S. 

    Deloitte’s Q4 report on the sentiments of CFOs in North America released on Dec. 14, found net optimism of finance chiefs for their own companies fell for the third quarter in a row, and the lowest level since Q2 2020. The talent crunch also remains major concern.

    Each quarter, Deloitte tracks a series of metrics around CFO expectations in revenue, earnings, dividends, cap spending, domestic hiring, and domestic wages, Steve Gallucci, the global and U.S. leader of Deloitte’s CFO Program, told me last month. “When you look at fourth quarter 2022 versus third quarter 2022 all those measures came down,” he said. The biggest declines were in year-over-year growth expectations for revenue and earnings at 4.2% and 2.9%, respectively, down from 6.2% and 6.4% in Q3.

    “Cost management going into 2023, with the continued uncertainty in respect to inflation, is going to be critical,” Gallucci said. 

    In the U.S., consumer prices rose 7.1% in November from a year ago, down from 7.7% in October and a high of 9.1% in June. In December, the Federal Reserve announced a 0.50 percentage point interest rate hike, its seventh rate hike in an effort to tame inflation. The minutes from the Fed’s meeting Dec. 13-14 meeting were released on Wednesday. “Participants stressed that the committee’s ongoing monetary policy tightening to achieve a stance that will be sufficiently restrictive to return inflation to 2 percent is essential for ensuring that longer-term expectations remain well anchored,” according to the document.

    CFOs across the globe are undoubtedly preparing for what many are predicting to be a roller coaster year.

    See you tomorrow.

    Sheryl Estrada
    sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

    Big deal

    The burden of debt repayments rose for U.S. companies in the third quarter of 2022, according to a new S&P Global Market Intelligence report. The median interest coverage ratio fell from 8.98 to 8.19 in the third quarter of 2022. This metric tracks the ability of companies to cover interest payments on their debt by dividing earnings before interest and taxes by the cost of debt-interest payments of companies rated BBB- or higher by S&P Global Ratings. The decline breaks “a near-continuous increase” in the ratio since the second quarter of 2020. This indicates that “companies are feeling the pinch of rising borrowing costs and a weaker economy,” according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.

    Courtesy of S&P Global Market Intelligence

    Going deeper

    Willis Towers Watson’s (WTW) annual analysis of the funded status of the nation’s largest corporate pension plans found the 10-year march toward full funding lost momentum in 2022. The funded status ended 2022 at 95%, the same level it began the year as weak investment returns offset lower pension liabilities created by higher interest rates, according to WTW. The funded status had been rising steadily since 2012 when it stood at 77%. The findings are based on an analysis of pension plan data for 356 Fortune 1000 companies that sponsor U.S. defined benefit pension plans and have a December fiscal year-end date. Overall investment returns are estimated to have averaged -19% in 2022, although returns varied significantly by asset class, WTW found.

    Leaderboard

    Tom Boyle, CFO, has been appointed to also serve as chief investment officer at Public Storage (NYSE: PSA), an owner, acquirer, developer, and operator of self-storage properties, effective Jan. 1, Boyle’s additional role as chief investment officer will include development, redevelopment, acquisitions, asset management, and third-party management. He joined Public Storage in 2016, serving as CFO of operations, until his appointment as the company’s CFO in 2019. Before joining Public Storage, Boyle served in roles of increasing responsibility with Morgan Stanley since 2005, from analyst to his last role as executive director of equity and debt capital markets.

    Zahir Ibrahim was named CFO at BARK, Inc. (NYSE: BARK), e-commerce and content company for dog lovers, effective immediately. Most recently, Ibrahim served as CFO and chief administrative officer at the startup Do Good Foods LLC. Before to that, he served as CFO of KIND LLC, a healthy snacks company. Ibrahim also previously served as CFO at Annie’s Inc., a natural and organic food company. He also held several roles at Molson Coors Brewing Company culminating with VP, controller, and chief accounting officer. Earlier in his career, Ibrahim served in senior financial positions at CML Innovative Technologies, and Elementis Specialties, and Pirelli Tires.

    Overheard

    “The environment remains challenging, and our customers are taking a more measured approach to their purchasing decisions. With this in mind, we’ve made the very difficult decision to reduce our workforce by about 10%, mostly over the coming weeks.”

    —Salesforce cofounder and CEO Marc Benioff wrote in an email to staff on Wednesday, Fortune reported. U.S.-based employees affected by the layoffs will be entitled to five months of pay as well as insurance, career resources, and other benefits during their transition.

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    Sheryl Estrada

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  • Macy’s CFO says his finance team will help ‘shape outcomes’ in 2023, not just report results

    Macy’s CFO says his finance team will help ‘shape outcomes’ in 2023, not just report results

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    “The finance team will not report the news,” says Macy’s Inc. CFO Adrian V. Mitchell. “The finance team is going to help shape outcomes with our partners across the enterprise. That mindset shift was quite critical.”

    As we head into 2023, I followed up with Mitchell about the progress of Macy’s transformation to a digitally-led business. He says the finance, planning, merchandising, and supply chain teams are working together to modernize the retailer, which has been in business for more than 150 years.

    “Much of the modern department store ambition is about retooling Macy’s by building new capabilities, exiting legacy capabilities, and showing up for the customer,” he says. 

    Macy’s Inc. CFO Adrian V. Mitchell / Courtesy of Macy’s Inc.

    By streamlining its supply chain, Macy’s improved inventory turnover by 15% compared to before the pandemic, the company reported in its Q3 earnings. A big part of supply chain and inventory management has to do with analytic capabilities using tools like machine learning and demand forecasting, Mitchell says. 

    With a deep focus on the supply chain in 2021, “We were able to get the vast majority of our inventory in time for the holiday, and very little [of 2021 goods] actually spilled into 2022,” he says. “In 2022, we’ve seen the supply chain loosen up. The fill rates continue to improve every month, and every quarter this year. So we’ve adjusted and we’re watching confirmed orders.”

    He continues, “So if you think about the 2022 holiday, we had 55% newness, which is 30 percentage points higher than 2019. We’re coming into the season with a lot of newness as a fashion retailer, and we can actually adjust in season based on the demand profile.”

    Location-level pricing is an area where Macy’s uses machine learning, Mitchell says. For example, they can look at the velocity of a particular item like a black Polo sweater, its inventory availability in specific locations, and availability for the digital business “Then we can predict for that black Polo sweater what the appropriate markdown magnitude and timing should be,” on a case basis, he explains. This is different from the past when looking at the sell-through rate and then making decisions on markdowns that would apply to every store in a particular region, he says.

    “Pricing analytics continue to pay dividends for us,” Mitchell says.

    Mitchell has replaced manual processes with technology that includes enterprise reporting “that’s one truth for how the entire leadership team and their managerial teams talk about performance,” he says. “We talk about inventory, sales, margin, credit business, marketplace business, all on one sheet of data and information.”

    Macy’s reported net sales in Q3 were $5.2 billion, down 3.9% compared to the same time last year. However, the retailer beat estimates. “We’re pleased to be on the higher end of our sales expectations,” Mitchell says. “We were able to beat the bottom line handily relative to expectations.” 

    “Our stores were ready for the holiday in mid-October,” he says. “This year, we believe the holiday pattern is very much a pre-pandemic pattern.” The demand is on Black Friday, Cyber Monday, cyber week, and the 10 to 12 days leading up to Christmas, he says. 

    “The consumer remains under pressure,” Mitchell says. “We do recognize that in dollars things are more expensive on the nondiscretionary side. So we have to continue to delight the customer.” The company will be able to share more data in January, he says.

    For Mitchell’s finance team, getting a 360-degree view of the business is critical, and you can’t just do that from your desk. “My finance leaders and their teams are now going to [distribution centers], they’re going to stores, they’re sitting in working sessions with business partners to understand the levers that we need to pull in order to drive the financial outcomes,” he explains. 

    See you tomorrow.

    Sheryl Estrada
    sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

    Big deal

    Accenture’s new report, “Payments Gets Personal,” explores the consumer transaction journey and provides insight on future payment innovations. Globally, 66% of consumers surveyed use cash for payments at least five times a month. By region, North America had the lowest percentage of consumers (59%) that use cash frequently. Debit card came in second as the most frequent form of pay globally (64%). And more than half (56%) of respondents use a digital wallet. Biometrics payments is the authentication of physical characteristics such as retinas, fingerprints, and faces. Forty-two percent of respondents believe biometrics are likely to be widely used by 2025. In addition, 9% said they would be willing to use it as their in-person primary method of payment, if available, by 2025. The findings are based on a survey of more than 16,000 consumers in 13 countries across Asia, Europe, Latin America, and North America.

    Courtesy of Accenture

    Going deeper

    Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon’s cloud computing services, the company’s “best performing and least recognized business, is cutting few, if any jobs,” and may even add headcount next year, writes Fortune’s Geoff Colvin. For his piece, “The CEO of Amazon Web Services likes to hire people who are ‘restless and dissatisfied.’ Here’s why,” Colvin sat down with Adam Selipsky to talk about the culture of AWS and how he chooses team members.

    Leaderboard

    Christina Zamarro was promoted to EVP and CFO at The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company (Nasdaq: GT), effective Jan. 1. Zamarro will succeed Darren R. Wells, who will become EVP and chief administrative officer. Zamarro joined Goodyear in 2007 after several years working for Ford Motor Company. She’s currently VP of finance and treasurer at Goodyear. For more than 15 years with the company, Zamarro has played key roles in financial strategy, treasury, and investor relations functions.

    James M. Moses was named vice chairman and CFO of First Hawaiian Bank and its parent company First Hawaiian, Inc. (Nasdaq: FHB), effective Jan. 3. Moses has more than 20 years of experience in the banking field. He joins the company from First Bank in St. Louis, Missouri, where he served as EVP and CFO. His previous experience includes serving as EVP and CFO of Berkshire Hills Bancorp, and SVP and manager of Asset Liability Management at Webster Bank.

    Overheard

    “We still have some ways to go.”

    —Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said at a press conference on Wednesday that officials were not close to ending their campaign of interest-rate increases to tame inflation. Powell’s statement followed the central bank’s announcement of a 0.50 percentage point interest rate hike, which is smaller than the four previous hikes of 0.75 percentage points. Officials also signaled borrowing costs would head higher than expected next year, Fortune reported.

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    Sheryl Estrada

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  • More CFOs are ditching back-to-back video meetings to curb employee burnout

    More CFOs are ditching back-to-back video meetings to curb employee burnout

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    Employee burnout is real and can be heightened by inefficient work processes. And since hiring and retaining talent remains a top concern for CFOs, some are working toward curbing the stress levels of their team members—by also curbing daily video meetings.

    This week, Gina Mastantuono, CFO of the software company ServiceNow, shared a LinkedIn post with her thoughts about research on brain wave activity, which found back-to-back video meetings increase stress levels. “Those of us working in a hybrid model feel it,” Mastantuono writes. “It’s why I changed it up and set some new guidelines for our ServiceNow finance employees.”

    “Our Zoom meetings are no longer 30 or 60 minutes,” she writes. “The majority of our meetings in finance now last 20-25 minutes with a five-minute buffer to stretch and  take a mental break before the next meeting starts,” Mastantuono writes. “We’ve been at it for the last several months and see a stark difference.”

    “We’ve also instituted Friday WIN (What’s Important Now) time,” she explains. “Every Friday from 1-5 p.m. (local time), everyone in finance blocks their calendars and is discouraged from having video meetings. The purpose is an intentional focus. It gives us space to catch up on reading, writing, and whatever is essential to get your job done healthily, without constant interruption.” Mastantuono added, “Listening to your employees’ feedback is pure gold.”

    The last time I chatted with Xihao Hu, CFO at TD Bank in the U.S., he shared with me best practices in data storytelling. This time Hu shared his thoughts on making meetings less stressful. “I’ve read several articles and stories recently about companies encouraging employees to cancel all meetings or cut back on their meetings throughout the day,” he told me. “This has definitely sparked my interest and influenced my way of thinking.” As a company, TD has encouraged employees to hold 20-to-25-minute meetings vs. 30-minute time blocks, and “We practice well-being by taking screen breaks or walking meetings,” Hu says. 

    Regarding employee engagement, TD’s “Training Days,” which include a full day of workshops and panel discussions, “gives employees the flexibility to dive into a variety of interesting topics mapped to their career development or areas of interest,” Hu says. “We block out the calendars well in advance to avoid meeting conflicts on Training Days,” he says. 

    Hu also told me what he does personally to combat burnout. “As a leader, it’s important that I practice what I preach because everyone needs support from leadership when finding work-life balance,” he explains. “I block ‘me’ time in the calendar where I enjoy spending time with my parents or watching soccer. I also share how I spend my time through open, honest, and frequent communication with my entire team. It starts at the top and creates a positive ripple effect which hopefully helps avoid meeting fatigue.”

    I asked Alka Tandan, CFO at tech company Gainsight, her thoughts about video meetings. “We’re very aware that our remote-first workplace can easily lead to virtual meeting fatigue,” Tandan told me. Gainsight makes use of the “speedy meetings” setting in Google Calendar, which “limits meetings to 25 or 50 minutes and helps us avoid back-to-back calls when possible,” she says. Tandan encourages department leaders to identify certain days of the week that are “focus days” where internal departmental meetings are discouraged, she says. “It gives us the time and energy to focus on getting work done and forces us to ask if a meeting is truly necessary to accomplish our goals,” she explains. “We still meet externally with other departments, vendors, or customers.”

    “Gainsight has strict rules on weekend emails,” she says. “We ask employees to try and avoid work emails on Saturdays so everyone can take some well-deserved time off.” And in addition to regular unlimited PTO, weekends and public holidays, employees get an extra day off each month called “Recharge Days.”

    Chalk time and meeting management up to yet another line item CFOs are having to become experts at balancing.

    Try to unplug and have a good weekend.

    Sheryl Estrada
    sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

    Big deal

    The 2022 U.S. Bank CFO Insights Report, gauges the priorities of finance leaders as they navigate uncertain times. Regarding inflation risks, the top practices are identifying opportunities to cut costs (57%), evaluating the credit risk of major customers (35%), evaluating working capital practices (32%), and pricing (32%). However, CFOs surveyed view the talent shortage as the top risk, more so than high inflation, according to the report. Ways finance leaders plan to cut costs include investing in technology, discontinuing low-margin/low-growth business lines, and outsourcing certain business functions. The results are based on a survey of 750 senior finance leaders who work in U.S. businesses across multiple sectors.

    Courtesy of U.S. Bank

    Going deeper

    Here are a few weekend reads:

    A crypto security CEO did business with Sam Bankman-Fried and sent a team to the Bahamas. He was shocked by the lack of interest in security controls and FTX’s grand ideas: ‘Maybe we’ll buy Goldman Sachs’ by Shawn Tully

    3 reasons why the huge tech layoffs don’t mean a recession is around the corner, Goldman says by Prarthana Prakash

    Introducing the chief remote officer: Corporate America’s response to a hybrid workforce that’s here to stay by Trey Williams

    Early birds for the win. Here’s why working out before noon is key to your health by L’Oreal Thompson Payton

    Leaderboard

    Here’s a list of some notable moves this week:

    Donald R. Kimble, CFO and chief administrative officer at KeyCorp (NYSE:KEY) will retire on May 1, 2023. He will be succeeded by Clark H.I. Khayat, currently chief strategy officer. Khayat joined KeyCorp in 2012, leading corporate strategy and then serving as group head of commercial payments. He established Key’s enterprise payments and fintech partnership strategies. Khayat led the company’s strategy to build scale through a series of investments in capabilities such as digital and analytics as well as successful niche acquisitions, including Laurel Road, Cain Brothers, and Pacific Crest.

    Nancy Walsh was named CFO at Katapult Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq: KPLT), an omnichannel point-of-sale payment platform, effective Dec. 12. Former CFO Karissa Cupito is transitioning into a senior advisory role to support the transition through the first quarter of 2023. Walsh most recently was EVP and CFO of LL Flooring Holdings, Inc., a retailer of hardwood flooring and hardwood flooring accessories. Before joining LL Flooring Holdings, Walsh was EVP and CFO of Pier 1 Imports, Inc. She has also held senior finance and risk management roles at The Bon-Ton Stores, Inc., Tapestry, Inc., Viacom, and Timberland.

    John Klinger was promoted to EVP and CFO at The TJX Companies, Inc. (NYSE: TJX), an off-price retailer of apparel and home fashions, effective Jan. 29, 2023. Klinger joined TJX in 2000 as a manager of business analysis at Marmaxx. He held various finance positions within HomeGoods and Marmaxx before being promoted to VP, divisional CFO for AJWright. Klinger then held the positions of VP of corporate finance and SVP, divisional CFO, TJX Europe. He later became EVP and corporate controller. 

    Andrew Murphy was promoted to CFO at Duos Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Duos Technologies Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: DUOT), effective Nov. 15. Since 2020, Murphy has served as VP of finance at Duos. Before joining Duos, Murphy held progressively senior finance roles within APR Energy. Before his time with APR, Murphy worked in corporate and public accounting with a focus on tax and business services.

    Donald C. Templin was named EVP and CFO at Voya Financial, Inc. (NYSE: VOYA), a health, wealth, and investment company. Templin most recently served as EVP and CFO of Marathon Petroleum Corp. He also served as CFO of MPLX LP, a diversified, large-cap master limited partnership formed by Marathon Petroleum. Before joining Marathon Petroleum in 2011, he held several roles at PwC, including serving as a partner at the firm.

    Jason Conley was promoted to CFO at Roper Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: ROP), a producer of engineered products for global niche markets, effective Feb. 1, 2023. Conley will succeed Rob Crisci as EVP and CFO. Conley, 47, is currently VP and chief accounting officer at Roper. He joined the company in 2006 as head of financial planning and analysis and investor relations. Conley also served as SVP of finance and HR at Roper’s Managed Health Care Associates business. 

    Overheard

    “Our annual planning process extends into the new year, which means there will be more role reductions as leaders continue to make adjustments. Those decisions will be shared with impacted employees and organizations early in 2023.”

    —Amazon CEO Andy Jassy wrote in a memo to workers on Thursday that the company will continue to lay off employees in the coming year, CNBC reported.

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  • ‘There’s definitely an accountant shortage out there’: MBAs have become the go-to degree and companies are struggling to hire enough CPAs

    ‘There’s definitely an accountant shortage out there’: MBAs have become the go-to degree and companies are struggling to hire enough CPAs

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    Securing the next generation of accountants won’t be easy. It may take some grassroots campaigning by mentors and family members to influence their loved ones to go that path, a technology boost, and a “CPA Evolution.”

    “There’s definitely an accountant shortage out there,” says Ben Lansford, an accounting professor and director of the Master of Accounting program at the Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University. “I hear it from the firms.” And in talking with colleagues at universities nationwide, “we see the declining enrollment in graduate accounting programs,” Lansford says.

    In 2021, there was a 17% drop in employed accountants and auditors from a 2019 peak, according to a Bloomberg Tax analysis. But the number of companies trying to hire accountants hasn’t slowed one bit.

    Between 2021 and 2031, on average, about 136,400 openings for accountants and auditors are projected each year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) occupational outlook handbook. The openings are due to workers leaving the field for different occupations or retiring.

    “In general, employment growth of accountants and auditors is expected to be closely tied to the health of the overall economy,” BLS states in the handbook.

    The next generation of accountants and auditors is in demand, but Lansford explained why some are hesitant. “Accounting is difficult,” he says. “It’s just a tough subject area, and you need a fifth year of college education to qualify to sit for the CPA exam. It makes a major less appealing to a lot of people.”

    But what needs to be communicated to students and young professionals is the time and energy is worth it, Lansford says. “It’s still a good path,” he says. “A rock-solid foundation.” The Big Four accounting firms are even reaching out to high school students to share that message and creating more flexible work environments, Lansford says.

    But it may take a village to get a student interested in accounting.

    “I find that often those students have an older family member, parent, aunt, or uncle, or friend of the family who took that same path and counseled the student about the benefits of accounting,” Lansford says.

    Over the past three years, Lansford has observed more students in graduate accounting programs choosing consulting jobs because they pay more than being entry-level accountants at a firm, he says. According to the BLS, the median annual wage for accountants and auditors was $77,250 in May 2021.

    ‘CPA Evolution’

    But changes to the CPA are coming—with the hope of attracting tech workers to the profession. “The AICPA is calling it a CPA Evolution, and it’s really an overhaul of the CPA exam,” Lansford explains. Starting in 2024, “everyone will take the same three sections, but for the fourth exam section, you can specialize in financial reporting, auditing, tax, or you can specialize in IT. The goal of the change is to make the tent bigger, so to speak.” That’s an interesting addition, since CFOs are increasingly finding themselves at the center of major IT projects. 

    But one drawback under the new CPA exam model is everyone still gets the same CPA certification, Lansford says. There’s no special designation that you took the IT exam area, he says. “So, we as academics are interested in seeing how things play out,” he says. 

    In recent years MBAs seem to have eclipsed CPAs. But maybe the number crunchers shouldn’t be counted out just yet.

    See you tomorrow.

    Sheryl Estrada
    sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

    Big deal

    An increase in customer expectations for e-commerce is placing “intense pressure” on retailers to rebuild their supply chains. That’s one of the key findings of “Increase your pace in the e-commerce race,” a new study conducted by the CMO Council and Business Performance Innovation Network, in cooperation with Attabotics, a robotics and software company. Executives are acutely aware of the need for supply chain and fulfillment transformation and looking for innovative and economically-sound ways to drive change. But they face significant financial and technological hurdles. Legacy systems (70%) and infrastructure in addition to the cost of replacement (61%), were listed as the top barriers to supply chain transformation. The findings are based on a survey of more than 150 executives and professionals across retail, e-commerce, consumer products, distribution, and consulting firms involved in consumer supply chains.

    Courtesy of the CMO Council

    Going deeper

    “San Francisco died so the Bay Area could thrive: What the 10 fastest-growing metro areas reveal about the world of remote work,” a new Fortune report, delves into the findings of research by the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise, which points to the metro areas experiencing the most growth as business establishes a new normal after the pandemic.

    Leaderboard

    Deborah Thomas, EVP, and CFO at Hasbro, Inc. (Nasdaq: HAS), a global entertainment company, plans to retire. Hasbro is conducting an internal and external search for a successor. Thomas will remain as CFO until her successor is in place. She joined the company in 1998.

    Michael W. Kalb was named EVP and CFO at CinCor Pharma, Inc., effective Nov. 4. He succeeded Terry Coelho who has retired. Kalb was previously CFO for Amarin Corporation, a cardiovascular-focused pharmaceutical company. Before Amarin, he worked at Taro Pharmaceuticals where he was the CFO and chief accounting officer. His experience also includes a director in the Accounting and Financial Consulting Group of Huron Consulting Group Inc., and over 10 years at Ernst & Young, LLP. 

    Overheard

    “I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here. I know this is tough for everyone, and I’m especially sorry to those impacted.”

    —Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote a letter to employees on Wednesday announcing the company was reducing its workforce and letting go of more than 11,000 employees, Fortune reported. 

    This is the web version of CFO Daily, a newsletter on the trends and individuals shaping corporate finance. Sign up to get it delivered free to your inbox.

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  • Schneider Electric launched in 1836 but solves 21st-century sustainability problems

    Schneider Electric launched in 1836 but solves 21st-century sustainability problems

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    Schneider Electric was founded in 1836 in France, and in the 21st century it’s one of the world’s most sustainable companies, now helping Walmart decarbonize its scope 3 emissions.

    Over the past 15 years, under CEO Jean-Pascal Tricoire, Schneider acquired automation, energy-efficiency, and electricity brands including Invensys, TAC, and Andover. The company has been reinventing itself from selling electrical products to digitizing and automating the infrastructure of everything from humongous factories to a house on your block.

    At a time when sustainability is top of mind, Schneider positioned itself around energy management. For example, the company acquired start-up climate-tech platform Zeigo in January. And to support its software solutions, in September, it announced a full takeover of the British software company Aveva PLC for $11 million. Schneider reported Q3 2022 revenues of €8.8 billion (about $8.57 billion), up 12% year over year, energy management was up 12.1%, and industrial automation up 12%. 

    Joshua Dickinson

    Courtesy of Schneider Electric

    Forty-one-year-old Joshua Dickinson is the new SVP and CFO for Schneider Electric North America (NAM). Dickinson, based in Dallas, began his career at the company in 2015 and was most recently VP and deputy CFO of NAM operations. He’s now responsible for all financial operations of the approximately 8.2 billion euro (FY ’21) ($7.9 billion) region. I sat down with Dickinson to talk about cost savings, upcoming projects, grappling with digital transformation in finance operations, and his leadership style.

    This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

    Fortune: What are some of the cost savings related to the digitization process?

    One of the things I get asked as a CFO in this space is, how do you reconcile the cost to become more sustainable with managing your P&L? When you look at our sustainability business, a lot of the engagements that we take on in our performance contracting business are targeting about 30% energy savings every year for that company’s operation. Once we digitize the facility, we can show people how they’re losing money, and how their operation is inefficient. And when you present that to a CFO or anyone who understands profitability, it can be a very powerful tool to incentivize them to change.

    Schneider Electric has plans to invest about $46 million in your Lexington, Ky., and Lincoln, Neb., manufacturing plants to digitize operations. Both plants are more than 50 years old. Why is the company choosing to undertake this effort?

    It’s to ensure that we’re living out our own story to have an electrified and digitized operation both in North America and globally. But then also, we use facilities like that as a showcase to customers who don’t understand the value of electrification and digitization, especially to operations. During a recent trip to Mexico, I visited our Rojo Gomez plant which was built in 1967. I was surprised to see another great example of one of our older operations that has been on a journey of electrification and digitization, and the tangible value they were experiencing in their efficiency and overall quality of operations.

    Now that you’re CFO, and Schneider will have increased large-scale projects in the U.S., what will your role be in the process?

    I would say more of my role as a CFO at Schneider isn’t necessarily being a cheerleader but making sure that the decisions that I’m making on real estate and our facilities are enabling progress. Upstream supply is a huge part of this. As a large company, a lot of our carbon footprint is with our suppliers. My job as a CFO is to make sure that ESG remains at the forefront, leveraging it, and keeping it involved in the decision-making process.

    Speaking of ESG, as public companies await the passage of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed mandatory climate-risk disclosure rule, CFOs will most likely be at the center of enhanced reporting. What’s your perspective?

    Even if the SEC’s ESG reporting rules don’t go into effect, I think we’re seeing a cultural change in the interest level and the importance of this to people. I think it’s critical that both the CFO and the CEO are fully aligned on the commitments that they’re making. Greenwashing is having a negative effect within financial institutions, but also with shareholders. People are having more and more interest in what a company is really doing about their commitments.

    As a large global company, how is your digital transformation in finance going?

    There are times we struggle with the siloed effect. When you think about the digitization journey within finance, we’re really now in a process of taking the best practices from each zone. Internally, we have the tag phrase “One Finance.” When I was recently in Las Vegas at our Innovation Summit, a few mornings I had the privilege of getting on some 3 a.m. calls, being on Pacific time, and talking with some of my European counterparts. It was an opportunity to share best practices and make decisions on what we’re going to keep from the different pieces, but then we’re going to put it on a single digital platform, a single operating structure where we’re standardizing whatever we can. 

    If you think about it, if I explain my financial performance, say to Hilary Maxson [EVP and group CFO], using different tools and different KPIs [than my counterparts], when she’s hearing my explanation versus hearing from China or from France, that can be very confusing. And we might not be comparing apples to apples, right? I think for a while, we really held off and we were playing defense. But the leadership team right now assembled by Hilary is such a great group of people. We’re very like-minded. 

    What is your leadership style?

    I’ve got a great team and I would say that’s one of my strengths because I’m not an expert in every element of the finance function. My ability to attract talent and manage a team effectively, I think is part of my success story. It’s only been three months since I was a peer of a lot of the people that I’m leading. When you think about going from a peer and a friend to a boss, at least for me, it was a little intimidating. But that’s been one of the most rewarding parts of the last three months, just seeing the closeness and the level of talent that’s on my team. 

    I hope you enjoy your weekend.

    Sheryl Estrada
    sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

    Big deal

    PwC’s latest pulse survey, “Cautious to Confident,” finds business leaders continue to show optimism amid economic pressures. Ninety percent of executives surveyed are concerned about macroeconomic conditions. They’re also very concerned about the Federal Reserve’s tightening cycle, and the higher cost of capital (both at 86%). However, the findings also showed that executives are focused on the future. Seventy-seven percent of executives are confident that they can hit near-term growth goals, and 82% are confident that their company can execute overall business transformation initiatives. The survey was conducted from Oct. 12-18 and had a total of 657 executives from both public and private companies.

    Courtesy of PwC

    Going deeper

    Here are a few weekend reads:

    “This interactive map shows the home price shift in America’s biggest housing markets” by Lance Lambert

    “3 charts that shed light on when the stock market may hit bottom” by Lucy Brewster

    “How Peyton Manning built a ‘second chapter’ from quarterback to media king without a plan” by Jane Their

    “Four ways to adjust to Daylight Saving Time ending, according to a sleep expert” by L’Oreal Thompson Payton

    Leaderboard

    Here’s a list of some notable moves this week:

    Eliane Okamura was named CFO at Ford Motor Credit Company. Okamura will succeed Brian Schaaf, CFO, treasurer and EVP of strategy, since 2018, who will retire, effective Dec. 1. Okamura has been director of automotive strategy, risk, and agile finance on Ford’s treasury team, since March 2021. She joined the company in 1995 in Brazil as an analyst and held positions including treasurer of Ford South America. 

    Todd Wilson was named CFO at Red Robin Gourmet Burgers, Inc. (Nasdaq: RRGB), a full-service restaurant chain, effective Nov. 7. Wilson succeeds Lynn Schweinfurth who will retire. Wilson most recently served as CFO at Hopdoddy Burger Bar and Hibar Hospitality. Before that, he was VP of finance for Jamba Juice. Wilson also served as Division CFO and VP of finance at Bloomin’ Brands Carrabba’s Italian Grill.

    Jim Benson was named CFO at Dynatrace (NYSE: DT), a software intelligence company, effective Nov. 15. Benson will succeed Kevin Burns, who announced in May his intention to transition out of Dynatrace by the end of the year. Benson most recently served as EVP and CFO at Akamai Technologies, a global cloud services, and cybersecurity leader. Before joining Akamai, he spent 20 years at Hewlett Packard Company.

    Cecilia Situ was named EVP and CFO at Santa Cruz County Bank (OTCQX: SCZC). Most recently, she was SVP and treasurer at Bank of Marin, and previously controller and principal accounting officer. She had a 14-year tenure with the company. Situ started her career in public accounting at Deloitte & Touche with a specialty in auditing community banks, real estate firms, not-for-profit organizations, and other financial service companies.

    Jeff Stafeil was named EVP and CFO at Tenneco Inc. (NYSE: TEN). Stafeil will replace Matti Masanovich, upon Tenneco’s acquisition by Apollo Funds. Stafeil will join Tenneco from Adient PLC, where he served as EVP and CFO since 2016. Before that, he worked at global automotive electronics supplier Visteon, where he was EVP and CFO. 

    Andrew Lazarus was named CFO at Validity, a provider of data management and email marketing success solutions. Lazarus will leverage his experience in finance and investor relations to scale the company for its next stage of growth. Previously, he has served as CFO at several companies, including Electric, Pilot Freight Services, and BAE Systems Applied Intelligence.

    Overheard

    “I heard about the blue tick for a while, but I learned about the $8 thing at the same time you did. Anything that can reduce the bots on Twitter is fantastic.”

    —Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, who pumped $500 million into Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s vision for Twitter, commented during Web Summit this week about Twitter’s intent to start selling blue verification badges for user profiles as part of an $8-a-month subscription, Fortune reported. 

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  • How AllianceBernstein’s Kate Burke pivoted from HR to CFO

    How AllianceBernstein’s Kate Burke pivoted from HR to CFO

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    Kate Burke, the CFO, and chief operating officer at AllianceBernstein, always had aspirations to be in a C-suite role, but her road was unexpected.

    I sat down with Burke to ask her perspective on the economy and to discuss her journey to becoming finance chief. Burke was appointed CFO at the global investment management and research firm AllianceBernstein (NYSE: AB) in July, succeeding interim CFO Bill Siemers, who returned to his prior role as corporate controller and chief accounting officer. As CFO and COO, she oversees aspects including finance, strategy, operations, corporate communications, legal and compliance, as well as diversity, equity and inclusion, and corporate citizenship, to name a few.

    Both researchers and many CFOs I’ve spoken with describe the evolving finance chief role as including a heightened focus on operational change, business strategy, and employees. Burke has a resume with experience in all of these areas.

    A focus on talent

    One of her first jobs was in investor relations at Tommy Hilfiger, says Burke, who earned an MBA at Northwestern University. She joined Bernstein Research in 2004 in institutional sales, which would eventually lead to becoming the head of human capital and chief talent officer in 2016 for AllianceBernstein. 

    “It was really a remarkable transition point for me,” Burke says. She worked with talent across the firm in the areas of investment, distribution, sales, and operations, and kept in mind “the financial acumen that I had established at Bernstein Research,” she says.

    An example? Burke would talk to the human capital team about “the concept of a return on invested capital, and I said, we have to think about the return on invested time,” she explained. The goal was to create a mindset of: “Every time you ask a person to do something, are you asking them to do something that creates value?” she says.

    Kate Burke, CFO and COO at AllianceBernstein

    Courtesy of AllianceBernstein

    How do you measure return on invested time? The process is more conceptual than a precise science, Burke says. They consistently used surveys to track engagement. “Are they getting purpose out of their work?” she explains. “Do they understand the firm’s strategies? Are you being supported by the team in your business?” Her team reviewed the findings along with retention metrics, Burke says.

    At an asset management firm, the ability to “align your people and the organizational strengths with your strategic initiatives to drive long-term success” is essential, she says.

    Burke moved on to the chief administrative officer role in June 2019 and then became COO in July 2020. “I was able to leverage the experiences of knowing all of the talent and the positives and challenges that existed throughout the organization,” she says.

    One major project was the four-year endeavor of moving AllianceBernstein’s corporate headquarters from New York to Nashville. The office opened in May. As COO, “running the day to day is part of it,” Burke says. “But a lot of it goes into planning for the future.” She also served as head of wealth management before taking on the CFO role.

    Asking the right questions

    Burke says she’s had “a very strong mentor in Seth Bernstein, our CEO.” In taking on expanded roles over the past 18 years, “I was inheriting very strong teams that had deep subject matter expertise,” she says. Burke’s number one learning tool? “The willingness to recognize what I don’t know and ask questions,” she says. 

    The idea is, “‘Look, you know, more than I do, there’s a reason why you’re the subject matter expert,’” she says. Burke’s questions started from “a 10,000-foot level and then I’m going to work my way down into the details,” she says. Her questioning, in turn, helped team members to keep the business strategy in perspective, she says. “In my capacity, from human capital, to COO to CFO, I’ve worked very closely with our finance department,” Burke says.

    Her priorities in stepping into the CFO as the COO? “I took over [the CFO role] mid-year, in a year that’s been challenging for the markets to say the least,” Burke says. Managing investments that “we were committed to make from a strategic standpoint against the day to day business, and understanding the impact it was going to have on our operating leverage, was paramount,” she says. 

    Regarding the economy, “I think we’re going to continue to be in a challenging inflationary environment, which creates a higher probability of a recession going into next year,” Burke says. “And I think that’s what you’re seeing somewhat being priced into the markets now is that concern. We still generally believe you could see more Fed action. Between now and certainly November will be an interesting time to see what comes through.”

    See you tomorrow.

    Sheryl Estrada
    sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

    Big deal

    “The Pursuit of Effective Workplace Learning,” a study by Emergn, a global digital business services firm, gauges the signifance of learning and development (L&D) programs in the battle for talent. Workplace training can be a useful tool to recruit and retain top talent in an organization, the research found. More than half (55%) of professionals stated that learning and development (L&D) programs increased job satisfaction and employee morale. Also 75% said that strong workplace training would have a high impact on their decision to remain with an employer instead of seeking other opportunities. Emergn partnered with independent research firm Researchscape to survey more than 1,200 professionals from the United States and the United Kingdom.

    Courtesy of Emergn

    Going deeper

    The 2022 “Women in the Workplace” report from McKinsey & Company in partnership with LeanIn.Org released this morning, found that more women leaders are leaving their companies. For every woman at the director level who gets promoted to the next level, two women directors are choosing to leave their company, according to the report. Almost half (43%) of women leaders are burned out, compared to 31% of men at their level. A “broken rung” at the first step up to manager continues holding women back, the research found. For every 100 men who are promoted from entry level to manager, just 87 women are promoted, and just 82 women of color are promoted. Companies are also at risk of losing young women. Fifty-eight percent of women under 30 said advancement has become more important to them over the past two years, compared to 31% of women leaders. The findings are based on data from 330 companies and and a survey of more than 40,000 employees.

    Leaderboard

    Edith Hsu was named the first-ever CFO at PowerToFly, a diversity recruiting and retention platform. Hsu brings over 20 years of finance experience to the company, having worked with Fortune 500 companies and startups to scale operations and velocity. Before joining PowerToFly, she served as VP of finance at Kigen, which she spun out from Arm, a technology provider of processor IP. Hsu has also held multiple senior finance positions at growth-stage and venture-backed startups. Amy Kim was named PowerToFly’s first chief revenue officer. Kim built her career in B2B tech and digital media across tech companies, including Google, Microsoft, and Siebel Systems. Her work at early-stage companies has focused on scaling sales teams as they expand go-to-market strategies.

    Robert Leibrock was named SVP and CFO at Red Hat, Inc., a provider of open source solutions. Carolyn Nash, who was appointed to the SVP and CFO role in April 2022, has been named the company’s SVP and COO, effective immediately. Nash will continue reporting to Red Hat’s president and CEO Matt Hicks. Leibrock will report directly to Nash. Leibrock brings 20 years of experience in both the financial and operational space to Red Hat. He has spent much of his career at IBM, most recently serving as assistant controller. He also played a key role in IBM’s $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat in 2019, responsible for the overall project office, finance and operations functions, and driving offering synergies, according to the company.

    Overheard

    “Given dismal productivity growth, likely caused by quiet quitting, wage inflation will have to come down significantly if sustained months near 2% inflation is to be attained. I do not understand the basis for believing this is likely without a meaningful recession.”

    —Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who previously served as president of Harvard University and chief economist at the World Bank, tweeted on Monday his concern that “quiet quitters” are hurting U.S. worker productivity, Fortune reported. 

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  • Hoverfly Technologies Names Bill Maesalu as Chief Financial Officer

    Hoverfly Technologies Names Bill Maesalu as Chief Financial Officer

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    Accomplished CFO Hired to Lead Hoverfly’s Rapidly Expanding Global Finance Organization

    Press Release
    –

    Jul 7, 2022


    SANFORD, Fla., July 7, 2022 (Newswire.com)
    –
    Hoverfly Technologies Inc. is thrilled to announce Bill Maesalu has joined the leadership team as Chief Financial Officer. As CFO, Bill will lead Hoverfly’s global finance organization and financial activities, including accounting and controllership, financial planning and analysis, tax, investor relations, internal audit, and treasury. Maesalu’s hire follows Hoverfly’s successful spring bridge raise and strong first half order intake. 

    “Bill’s extensive experience as a CFO for both large and small manufacturing firms makes him an ideal fit for this critical period of rapid growth at Hoverfly,” said Hoverfly President and COO Steve Walters. “We are extremely happy to welcome him to the team and look forward to his contributions in financial leadership and management during this exciting time as we transition out of start-up mode and begin to scale our operations to meet the high order demands from our DoD customers.”

    Bill, a CPA, graduated from Bentley University with a bachelor’s degree in accounting. His career started as a cost accountant at Texas Instruments in Houston before moving to Coopers & Lybrand (now PWC). After leaving Coopers, Bill moved to the Stanley Works where he spent time as an Internal Auditor before moving to the corporate accounting group where he supervised financial reporting. Next, Bill moved to Rexam PLC and had multiple roles leading to VP of Finance for a major international division. After Rexam, Bill spent the past 25 years as a CFO for multiple capital equipment manufacturing companies. Most recently he was the CFO of an environmental equipment supplier. 

    “I’ve admired Hoverfly’s team and technology, and I’m excited to join a company that has not only been successful but also has the potential for considerable growth in the near future,” said new CFO Bill Maesalu. “I look forward to working with a talented team to continue to build on the great success Hoverfly has seen in recent years.” 

    Press Contact:

    Tyler Marple

    tyler.marple@hoverflytech.com

    hoverflytech.com

    407-985-4500

    Source: Hoverfly Technologies, Inc.

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