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The Morning Ledger: Best Buy Expected to Look for Tech-Savvy CFO
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Best Buy, whose finance chief will become chief executive in June, is expected to seek a new CFO with experience managing a transformational business model. PHOTO: MARIO ANZUONI/REUTERS
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Good morning. Best Buy Co. will likely seek out a transformation expert to fill its finance chief vacancy as the consumer electronics retailer aims to maintain its growth pace after a successful turnaround, CFO Journal’s Nina Trentmann reports.
Moving up. The Richfield, Minn.-based company is looking for a new finance chief after promoting Chief Financial Officer Corie Barry to the chief executive post, effective mid-June. Current Chairman and CEO Hubert Joly will take on the newly created position of executive chairman, Best Buy said.
[Continued below…]
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New focus. Best Buy recently completed a turnaround focused on cutting costs and remaking its operations to better compete with online rivals such as Amazon.com Inc. As Best Buy shifts focus to longer-term growth, it would benefit from a finance chief who has been part of a transition program at another retailer, said Cathy Logue, the head of the CFO practice at recruitment firm Stanton Chase. “It will have to be someone who is very versatile, someone who is comfortable with the big shift in the retail world,” she said.
Keeping pace with change. Finance chiefs in the retail sector must work collaboratively with other teams, including operations, human resources and information technology, to tackle the dramatic changes to how shoppers engage with stores that have taken place over the past decade. “The CFOs that have been most successful have been ones that have embraced these transformational needs in order to stay relevant,” said Paul McDonald, senior executive director at staffing and recruitment firm Robert Half International Inc.
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IAG, which also owns Iberia and Aer Lingus, said Steve Gunning will take over as CFO at the company’s annual general meeting in June. He succeeds current finance chief Enrique Dupuy de Lôme, who plans to step down after more than eight years in the role. Mr. Dupuy will continue to serve as president of Iberia Cards, a branded bank card program, IAG said.
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The Federal Reserve is scheduled to publish U.S. factory production figures at 9:15 a.m. ET. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal expect industrial production increased 0.2% in March from the prior month, while capacity utilization rose to 79.2% from 78.2% a month earlier.
Bank of America Corp., Netflix Inc., CSX Corp., International Business Machines Corp., Johnson & Johnson and United Continental Holdings Inc. are among the companies scheduled to report earnings today. The WSJ's Asa Fitch has three things to watch in IBM's results.
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Huawei’s success in Mexico shows the uphill climb U.S. officials face convincing private-sector leaders that the company poses a threat to information security. PHOTO: BLOOMBERG NEWS
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U.S. officials have told telecommunications executives around the world to steer clear of Huawei Technologies Co., calling the company a national-security threat, but that hasn’t prevented AT&T Inc. from using the Chinese company’s equipment in Mexico. Meanwhile, Poland is likely going to hold off on a blanket ban on Huawei gear due to cost concerns, Reuters reports.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s first-quarter profit fell 21% from a year ago as quiet trading and underwriting took a toll across Wall Street.
Citigroup Inc. said Monday its first-quarter profit rose 2% from a year ago, boosted by growth in U.S. consumer banking and a solid trading performance compared with its rivals.
American Airlines Group Inc., after saying for months that its pilots didn’t need additional ground-simulator experience on Boeing Co. 737 MAX jets, is moving to add such instruction to existing training sessions, according to industry officials.
South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries Holdings Co., the parent company of the world’s largest shipbuilder, signed a $1.2 billion deal to sell a stake in its oil-refining unit to Saudi Arabian Oil Co.
Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is raising another $500 million in funding amid internal questions about the viability of an internet-via-satellite business considered key to the company’s growth.
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Corporate Payments Fraud Attempts Set Record in 2018
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A record 82% of companies reported incidents of attempted or actual payments fraud in 2018, reflecting the need for greater oversight of corporate financial payments and cybersecurity, according to a survey by the Association for Financial Professionals.
Fifty-five percent of companies said the potential losses from fraud attempts were $100,000 or more. Actual direct financial losses from such fraud were less than $25,000 for 19% of the companies surveyed, while 57% reported that the actual direct financial loss from such fraud was zero.
Larger financial losses are less common because “payments over a certain number need an additional check,” said Magnus Carlsson, manager for treasury and payments at the AFP.
The AFP surveyed 617 corporate practitioners such as treasurers, cash managers, analysts, directors and vice presidents of treasury. Two-thirds of them came from companies with annual revenue of $1 billion or more.
—Tatyana Shumsky
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87%
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Share of companies that experienced attempted business email compromise, or scams that target the emails of both companies and individuals responsible for corporate payments, according to the Association for Financial Professionals.
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Ericsson’s Beijing office was raided Friday by China’s antitrust authorities over its technology licensing practices. PHOTO: TT NEWS AGENCY/REUTERS
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Swedish telecommunications-equipment maker Ericsson AB is under investigation by China’s antitrust authorities over its technology licensing practices, as the competition between companies and governments heats up over next-generation 5G information networks.
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Two U.S. House panels have issued subpoenas to Deutsche Bank AG and other financial institutions, as Democrats continued to pursue an inquiry into President Trump’s financial interests.
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Senior Trump administration officials are discussing how to jump-start an overhaul of mortgage finance, with the new federal overseer of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pledging to act with “a great sense of urgency” over the coming months.
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Banks owned by UniCredit SpA have agreed to pay $1.3 billion to settle claims they processed payments allegedly in violation of multiple U.S. government-sanctions programs.
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German prosecutors on Monday indicted Martin Winterkorn, the former chief executive of Volkswagen AG, and four other people on charges of serious fraud and a list of other violations in relation to the company’s diesel cheating scandal.
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The U.S. Treasury Department on Monday imposed sanctions on seven individuals and a money-services business that the agency said helped move money for Islamic State.
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Host Hotels & Resorts, the owner of 1 Hotel South Beach, had median worker pay of almost $184,000. PHOTO: BRYAN BEDDER/GETTY IMAGES FOR AMERICAN EXPRESS
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U.S. real-estate investment trusts had some of the highest median worker pay among financial, real-estate and insurance companies in 2018, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of annual pay disclosures by hundreds of big U.S. companies.
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U.S. workers produced $20.5 trillion in goods and services last year, but that measure of output said nothing about how the economy’s spoils were divvied up. Researchers at the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis are now working to change that.
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Health care is the worst-performing sector in the S&P 500 so far this year, with shares up 3.8%, compared with the broader index’s 16% gain. That’s a stark contrast from last summer, when health-care stocks emerged as a market leader.
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French President Emmanuel Macron and various entrepreneurs vowed to donate funds to help restore the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris which was hit by a devastating fire on Monday, the Financial Times reports.
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J.Jill Inc., the Quincy, Mass.-based retailer, named Mark Webb its executive vice president and chief financial officer. He begins the role on May 1. Mr. Webb succeeds David Biese, who was the company’s executive vice president, CFO and chief operating officer.
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Mr. Biese in November announced plans to leave the company. His last day will be April 30. Mr. Webb most recently served as senior vice president, chief financial planning and analysis, and treasury officer at Canadian retailer Hudson’s Bay Co. Before that, he was CFO for the Gap brand and for Intermix at Gap Inc. from February 2013 to April 2017.
Mr. Webb will receive an annual base salary of $600,000 and will be eligible for an annual bonus with a target of 70% of his base pay and up to 200% of his salary for exceptional performance, J.Jill said. He will also receive a one-time signing bonus of $100,000 and a sign-on restricted stock award valued at $700,000, the company said in a regulatory filing.
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CBRE Group Inc., the Los Angeles-based real-estate brokerage, named Leah Stearns as CFO, effective May 15. She succeeds James Groch, the company’s current CFO and chief investment officer, who will focus full time on his responsibilities as the company’s global group president and CIO.
Ms. Stearns was most recently senior vice president and CFO of the U.S. division of American Tower Corp. since November 2018. Before that, she served in various roles of increasing responsibility at that company for 17 years, including senior vice president corporate finance and treasurer from July 2018 to November 2018.
Ms. Stearns’s compensation will include an annual base salary of $700,000, an annual target bonus of $1 million and a target equity award of $2.2 million, the company said in a regulatory filing. She will also receive a one-time equity award of $3 million upon joining the company, tied to certain performance benchmarks, and a transition equity award that will vest over a four-year period worth $2 million, and a cash transition bonus of $1 million, according to the filing.
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SunTrust Banks Inc., the Atlanta-based lender, said CFO Allison Dukes plans to resign following the closing of the bank’s planned merger with BB&T Corp. Ms. Dukes will remain in her current role until the merger is closed and will continue to have a key role in integration planning, the bank said in a regulatory filing.
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