CFOs On the Move: Week Ending December 11

Andre Schulten Procter & Gamble promoted Andre Schulten to finance chief, effective March 1. Schulten, who joined the company in 1996, is currently senior vice president of baby care in North America. Earlier in his career, Schulten held other roles, including senior vice president of finance...

By Lauren Muskett • Dec. 11, 2020

How Airbnb’s Valuation Compares With That of Other Hotel Companies

Airbnb is set to deliver some huge gains for IPO investors on Thursday. After pricing its IPO shares at $68 on Wednesday, the stock opened for trading at $146.That $146 price range values Airbnb at around $100 billion, up from an $18 billion valuation during its last private fundraising round in ...

By Vincent Ryan • Dec. 10, 2020

Explore the Trendline➔

Top 5 stories from CFO.com

From CPA licensure changes to undergoing a digital transformation, these are the most popular stories CFOs are reading. 

By CFO.com staff

Sony to Buy AT&T’s Anime Streaming Business Crunchyroll

Sony announced it has reached an agreement to buy the anime business Crunchyroll from AT&T and WarnerMedia for $1.175 billion.The direct-to-consumer anime service has more than 3 million subscription-video-on-demand subscribers and 90 million registered users. According to TechCrunch, Crunchy...

By Vincent Ryan • Dec. 10, 2020

Health Care Questions CFOs Should Ask and Expect An Answer To

Heading into 2021, many companies are looking for ways to trim their budgets. Employee benefits are not usually one of the first places on the P&L that CFOs look to for savings. It’s somewhat of a black box: There is typically a great deal that companies don’t know about how their own health ...

By Michael Waterbury • Dec. 10, 2020

MicroStrategy to Raise $550M In Debt to Fund Purchase of More Bitcoin

Business intelligence software company MicroStrategy said Wednesday it would raise $550 million by the way of debt instruments to buy bitcoin, an increase of $150 million over its Monday announcement.The 0.75% convertible senior notes would be sold in a private offering to qualified institutional...

By Vincent Ryan • Dec. 10, 2020

GE Fined $200 Million for Accounting Irregularities

General Electric has agreed to pay $200 million to settle a probe of its accounting practices that showed it failed to disclose problems in its power and insurance businesses.According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, GE misled investors about how the power unit was making money an...

By Matthew Heller • Dec. 10, 2020

HydraFacial to Go Public Through Merger

The beauty and health company HydraFacial is going public through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company. In a statement, HyrdaFacial said it has reached an agreement to merge with Vesper Healthcare Acquisition, a SPAC cofounded by the former chief executive officer of Allergan, Bren...

By Lauren Muskett • Dec. 9, 2020

Joint Ventures: Driving Innovation While Limiting Risk

Companies may have to innovate their capital deployment strategies to stay ahead of the current massive market and economic disruptions. But those capabilities cannot always be scaled in-house or addressed through traditional mergers and acquisitions.CFOs are increasingly using joint ventures to ...

By Vincent Ryan • Dec. 9, 2020

Uber to Offload Self-Driving Unit to Amazon-Backed Startup Aurora

Uber Technologies has finalized a deal to offload its self-driving unit Uber Advanced Technologies Group to Aurora Innovation.What Happened: The combined company created by the merger of the two autonomous driving businesses is valued at close to $10 billion, according to TechCrunch. Instead of r...

By Lauren Muskett • Dec. 8, 2020

Tesla Files to Sell Another $5B in Stock

Tesla is planning to sell up to $5 billion in new shares of common stock, its second such move in the last three months. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said it would sell the shares “from time to time” and “at-the-market” prices.Tesla’s stock was up nearly 67...

By Lauren Muskett • Dec. 8, 2020

Metric of the Month: Time Allocation in Finance

Where does the time go in finance? At a high level, it may be obvious that your finance team is carrying out activities like transaction processing, setting controls, and providing decision support for the business throughout the week, but which activities get the lion’s share of finance’s time? ...

By Perry D. Wiggins • Dec. 7, 2020

Activision Sues Netflix for ‘Poaching’ CFO Neumann

Activision Blizzard has filed an executive poaching lawsuit against Netflix over its hiring of Spencer Neumann as CFO, alleging it illegally induced him to breach his contract with Activision.Netflix announced Neumann’s hiring in December 2018 when he was only halfway through the three-year contr...

By Matthew Heller • Dec. 7, 2020

Capital One Halts Buy-Now-Pay-Later Credit Card Transactions

Capital One Financial is no longer allowing customers to use its credit cards to pay off buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) debt, making it the first major card company to turn its back on the lucrative segment.In an emailed statement to Reuters, the company said it would bar transactions identified as poi...

By Lauren Muskett • Dec. 7, 2020

DOJ: Facebook Improperly Gave Hiring Preference to Foreign Workers

The Trump administration has filed a complaint against social-media giant Facebook alleging the company discriminated against U.S. workers by reserving job openings for temporary workers, including H-1B visa holders.In the lawsuit, the Department of Justice said Facebook refused to recruit, consi...

By Lauren Muskett • Dec. 4, 2020

2021 Wish List

We have no idea what 2021 will bring, but here are some things I hope to happen.1. Remote work. Working at home has been a godsend for some people; it has taken its toll on many others. My wish is that next year C-suite executives scrutinize how remote working affects organizational culture and i...

By Vincent Ryan • Dec. 4, 2020

CFOs On the Move: Week Ending December 4

Amy Weaver Amy Weaver was named president and CFO at Salesforce. Weaver, a current president and chief legal officer at the company, will take over for finance chief Mark Hawkin on February 1. Hawkin, who is retiring on January 31, will transition to an advisory role as CFO emeritus through Octob...

By Lauren Muskett • Dec. 4, 2020

Starbucks to Tie Executive Pay to Diversity Goals

Starbucks said it will tie executive pay to the success of its initiatives to increase diversity throughout the company.The company has said it is aiming to increase the percentage of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) to 30% at the corporate level by 2025. Within retail and manufactu...

By Lauren Muskett • Dec. 3, 2020

Special Report: SPACs — They’re Back

Scott Henry, CFO of Skillz, is a veteran of capital raising and exits. He steered Beats Music through its $3 billion sale to Apple in 2014. A decade before, he saw casino gaming company Las Vegas Sands through a $690 million public listing. But in August, when Henry joined Skillz, a monetization ...

By Vincent Ryan • Dec. 3, 2020

Do You Remember?: The Quiz

The news generated by once-in-100-year crises tends to drown out other events that take place. So it was with 2020, a year filled with stories about the COVID-19 pandemic and its damage to the macroeconomy and businesses. But CFO.com covered plenty of other corporate finance happenings these past...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Dec. 3, 2020

When Opportunity Knocks: Dealing With Recruiters

Executive recruiters looking to fill client C-suite positions in various industries are on the hunt for top talent, especially for CFO slots. One day this summer, Mike Laureno, the new CFO of SiteSpect, a platform for web and mobile marketers, got six LinkedIn connection requests from recruiters....

By Sandra Beckwith • Dec. 2, 2020

Private Sector Hiring Slows in November

U.S. private sector employers added 307,000 workers from October to November, according to the ADP Research Institute’s National Employment Report. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones expected 475,000 workers would be added in November.The jobs report comes as a surge in COVID-19 cases has led some ...

By Lauren Muskett • Dec. 2, 2020

Nasdaq Proposes Board Diversity Rule

The Nasdaq stock exchange has filed a proposal with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a new rule that would require companies to meet diversity standards for their boards of directors and publicly disclose “consistent, transparent diversity statistics” regarding board composition.If appr...

By Lauren Muskett • Dec. 1, 2020

S&P Global to Buy IHS Markit in $44B Deal

S&P Global has reached an agreement to buy the data provider IHS Markit. The all-stock transaction has an enterprise value of $44 billion, including $4.8 billion of net debt, making it the largest announced merger of 2020.Under the terms of the deal, S&P Global stockholders will exchange ...

By Lauren Muskett • Nov. 30, 2020

Justice Department Forces Intuit To Divest Credit Karma’s Tax Biz to Square

The U.S. Justice Department will reportedly require Intuit to sell its Credit Karma tax unit to Square as part of Intuit’s $7.1-billion buyout of Credit Karma.On Wednesday, CNBC reported that Intuit must divest Credit Karma’s tax unit in order for the Justice Department to approve the merger betw...

By Vincent Ryan • Nov. 25, 2020

Report: IBM To Cut 10,000 Jobs

IBM is planning to cut about 10,000 jobs in Europe to reduce costs as it prepares to spin off its managed infrastructure services unit, according to a report from Bloomberg. The job cuts could affect about 20% of staff in the region. The United Kingdom and Germany would be the hardest hit.The tec...

By Vincent Ryan • Nov. 25, 2020