Strategic partnerships, inflation, talent management—all the topics that mattered to CFOs this week

Here’s what happened this week:

“We are in this together, always,” Accenture CEO and chair Julie Sweet said of CFO KC McClure during Coins2Day’s recent virtual CFO Collaborative session in partnership with Workday. The execs spoke candidly about their working relationship in the C-suite at the multinational professional services company. “As my partner, it’s really critical that KC is a business leader first, just like I look to my general counsel as a business leader first with legal expertise. But also a leader that epitomizes our values,” Sweet said. However, being a CFO means sometimes respectfully disagreeing with your boss. In fact, that’s part of being a strategic business partner to the CEO, according to Sweet. “I wouldn’t do this in front of our 624,000 people, but one of the things KC and I are super comfortable doing with our broader leadership team is—not always agreeing,” she said.

When I spoke with Trivago CFO Matthias Tillmann earlier this week, he said there is an increased sense of optimism for this winter compared to last year. The global hotel and accommodation search platform released its third-quarter 2021 earnings, showing some signs of travel recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The company’s revenue increased about 129% to 139 million euros ($161 million) compared to 61 million euros ($70 million) the same time in 2020. However, 2021 business levels continue to be significantly below 2019 levels. The pandemic had “a drastic and unprecedented impact on our operating results starting in 2020,” according to the report. “The good news is that people traveled and they used as our platform as well to find an accommodation,” Tillmann said. That was “the big positive this quarter and, for sure, a key driver for the strong profit as well,” he noted. In the spring and early summer of 2022, Trivago expects travel demand and behavior to approach pre-pandemic levels in the Americas and Europe. Tillmann also shared the company’s plans to prepare for an upswing in travel.

You can be highly proficient in performing a task, but a colleague won’t want you on their team if you’re not trustworthy, and it comes down to how you communicate, according to new research. A recent study, Voices as a Signal of Human and Social Capital in Team Assembly Decisions, published in the Journal of Management, analyzes voice behaviors or communication styles in team environments. To learn more about it, I chatted with Cynthia Maupin, assistant professor of organizational behavior and leadership in Binghamton University’s School of Management and a co-author of the study. The researchers had the idea to investigate if different types of voice styles “signaled a desirable characteristic that others might want in a potential teammate,” Maupin told me. They wanted to examine whether having a challenging or supportive voice made an impact on the decision. “Supportive voice and the trustworthiness it signals is preferred over simply demonstrating your competence through constructive voice,” Maupin said of the study results. 

If there’s one economic buzzword that has dominated the debate for the past several months, it’s inflation. Fed Chair Jerome Powell noted in a press conference that overall inflation is “running well above” the central bank’s 2% long-term goal. The Fed announced it would “soon begin unwinding the billions of dollars worth of U.S. Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities it has been buying up every month since the beginning of the pandemic,” according to Coins2Day’s Declan Harty. That still leaves plenty of questions about the Fed’s options from here. Coins2Day’s Shawn Tully interviewed William Luther, an economics professor at Florida Atlantic University, and writes: If strong inflation takes hold, Luther predicts, the Fed will face two options. “The first is that the Fed ‘sticks to its guns’ by pledging to wrestle the price trend back to 2%, and because it’s waited so long, must radically contract credit to get there,” says Luther. That course would cause a deep recession, pounding bonds and equities. In the second course, the Fed would simply accept and perpetuate the today’s higher inflation as a new normal.  You can read the full article here.

Thanks a lot for reading. Have a great weekend.

Sheryl Estrada
[email protected]

Big deal

Accenture’s State of Cybersecurity Resilience 2021 study released on November 3 found there were, on average, 270 attacks per company over the year, about a 31% increase from 2020. About 82% of executives surveyed said their cybersecurity budgets have increased in the last year. IT security budgets are now up to 15% of all IT spending, which is 5 percentage points higher than reported last year, according to the study. Accenture identified four levels of cyber resilience: Cyber Champions, Business Blockers, Cyber Risk Takers, and The Vulnerable.

Courtesy of Accenture

Going deeper

Here are a few Coins2Day reads for the weekend:

OSHA announces new federal vaccine mandate for businesses—and gives employers until Jan. 4 to comply by Megan Leonhardt and Chris Morris 

‘I’m afraid we’re going to have a food crisis’: The energy crunch has made fertilizer too expensive to produce, says Yara CEO by Katherine Dunn

Only 11% of companies are hitting their emissions goals by Lance Lambert

Scandal-plagued Credit Suisse rolls out rescue plan and investors are not impressed by Christiaan Hetzner

Leaderboard

Some notable moves from this past week:

Thierry Chauche was named CFO at Provention Bio, Inc. (Nasdaq: PRVB), a biopharmaceutical company, effective December 1, 2021. Chauche succeeds Andrew, Drechsler who will be retiring, following a career of nearly 30 years in the financial and life sciences industry. Drechsler will continue to serve as a special advisor to the CEO and consultant through the middle of 2022. Chauche joins Provention Bio from Alexion Pharmaceuticals where he was the head of strategic financial planning and analysis. Prior to Alexion, he served in roles of increasing responsibility at Intercept Pharmaceuticals, Novartis and Rothschild & Cie.

Shou Zi Chew, CEO at TikTok, will step down as CFO at ByteDance to focus on running the video-focused social networking service full time, Reuters reported. Chew, who earned a spot on Coins2Day’s 40 under 40 list, joined ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, as CFO in March and was appointed as chief executive of TikTok in May. The company has not announced replacement plans for the CFO role. 

Kevin C. Clothier was named SVP and CFO at Crown Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: CCK), effective January 1, 2022. Clothier will succeed Thomas A. Kelly, the current SVP and CFO, who intends to retire in early 2022. He will be working closely with Kelly during the interim period to ensure a smooth transition. Clothier has been with the company since 1993. He previously served as VP and corporate controller and, since 2015, VP and treasurer.

Gordon Dunn was named CFO at Quoin Pharmaceuticals Ltd. (NASDAQ: QNRX), a specialty pharmaceutical company, effective immediately. During the past five years, Dunn has served as CFO for several private companies, most recently with Qured, a UK-based healthcare provider, from 2020 to 2021. He also served as CFO of Innocoll AG. From 2012-2016. Dunn has over 30 years of finance experience.

Timothy K. Flanagan was named CFO, VP of finance, and treasurer at GrafTech International Ltd. (NYSE:EAF). Flanagan will succeed Quinn J. Coburn, who will retire from his position, effective November 29, 2021. Most recently, Flanagan served as CFO at Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff, LLP, an AmLaw 200 law firm, since June 2019. He is also the former EVP and CFO at Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. Flanagan held a variety of financial leadership roles since joining the company in 2008.

John Long was named CFO at I-Mab (Nasdaq: IMAB), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, effectively immediately. Long has more than 20 years of financial leadership experience. He served as CFO or SVP of finance for a wide range of healthcare companies including the WuXi AppTec Group, WuXi NextCODE Genomics Inc., Genecast Biotechnology Co., Inc., and StemiRNA Therapeutics Co., Ltd. In addition, Long also took on senior financial management positions at large multi-national corporations including Willis International, Tyco (Asia and China) and Lucent Technologies.

Nicolina O'Rorke was named Global CFO at McCann Worldgroup, a global marketing solutions network, part of the Interpublic Group (NYSE: IPG). O'Rorke succeeds Gary Lee, who announced his retirement earlier this year and will serve in a transitional role over the next few months. O'Rorke joins the company from NBC Sports, where she served as SVP, NBC Sports Enterprises and General Manager, Sports Betting and Gaming. Previous to that role, she served as CFO, NBC Sports Regional Networks from 2015 to 2019, where she led strategy, business transformation and financial operations.

Maree E. Robertson was named SVP and CFO at Freeport-McMoRan Inc. (NYSE: FCX), an international mining company, effective March 1, 2022. Robertson has served as CFO, energy and minerals of Rio Tinto Group, a multinational metals and mining company, since 2019. Prior to joining Rio Tinto, she had a 17-year career at BHP Group, a multinational natural resources company, serving in a broad range of international finance functions. Robertson joined BHP in 2002 after four years in the PricewaterhouseCoopers natural resource audit practice.

Seun Sodipo was named CFO at Glossier, a beauty brand, effective February 2022. Current CFO, Vanessa Wittman, will retire next spring and become an advisor to the company. Sodipo most recently led product finance and strategy at Stripe, a financial services and software as a service company, after having spent multiple years in private equity and mergers and acquisitions. Sodipo will partner with Wittman to transition the finance org when she joins, according to the company.

Noreen Suing was named CFO at  Consolidated Hospitality Supplies, a multi-brand hotel distribution company. Suing served as VP of finance at American Hotel Register Company from 2012 to 2015. Most recently, she was CFO of Allied 100, a national distributor of health and safety products and services. Prior executive roles include CFO at Brook Furniture Rental and Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, as well as regional CFO at NRT.

Overheard

"I’m going to take my first three paychecks in Bitcoin when I become mayor. NYC is going to be the center of the cryptocurrency industry and other fast-growing, innovative industries."

—New York City’s newly elected mayor, Eric Adams, said in a tweet, as reported by Coins2Day.