Good morning, CFOs. Ellie Mertz, Airbnb’s new chief financial officer, knows about managing a crisis.

When the pandemic gripped the world in early 2020, Mertz was part of the leadership team at the short-term stay and vacation-property rental company. She recalls the switch to survival mode, focusing on raising capital, cutting nearly all discretionary spending and ultimately laying off 25% of staff.

Mertz sat down with CFO Journal recently to chat about her new role, managing through the pandemic and lessons learned from the company's 2020 initial public offering. When the IPO finally launched, the opening trade valued the company at $101.6 billion, versus its IPO valuation of about $47 billion. When the stock debuted, the company was worth more than Marriott International, Hilton Worldwide Holdings and Hyatt Hotels combined.

For her part, Mertz said managing through the pandemic and IPO helped the company gain insight and assess how its tightly managed, cross-functional process worked to manage the two events. “We saw the business effectively go to zero over a handful of weeks as the pandemic spread throughout the globe,” Mertz said. “We went from a very healthy balance sheet and positive free cash flow to effectively hemorrhaging cash very, very quickly.”

Looking ahead, Airbnb may selectively hire, where warranted, she said. In her new role, Mertz will focus on traditional functions such as strategic planning, FP&A and to a lesser extent corporate development, she said. In addition, she will oversee core finance subfunctions, such as tax, treasury, accounting and internal audit, which she has managed both at Airbnb and Netflix, where she was vice president of finance and investor relations.

“Ellie's stepping up at a really great time because the core business is very, very stable, and we are now about to embark on a transformation,” Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said in a separate interview. “So I think it's a new challenge for Ellie and for any CFO."

📆 Earnings

• Jabil

📈 Economic Indicators

The University of Michigan releases its Consumer Sentiment index for March.

Women Aren’t Getting the Big Jobs at Goldman Sachs, and They’re Heading for the Exits

When David Solomon became CEO of Goldman Sachs just over five years ago, he made promoting women to senior levels of the firm a priority. On Monday, he’ll host several women partners for dinner at his Manhattan apartment where he’ll face questions on why that hasn’t worked out.

Roughly two-thirds of the women who were partners at the end of 2018 have left the firm or no longer have the title, a Wall Street Journal analysis found. The same can be said of just under half of male partners at the time.

• Federal regulators fined JPMorgan Chase roughly $350 million on Thursday for failing to properly monitor billions of trades that the bank has executed since 2019.
• Private fund managers such as Apollo, Ares, Blackstone and KKR have grown to dominate corporate finance over the past decade. Now they are targeting the biggest prize in the global economy: the U.S. consumer.
• Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he’s putting together a consortium to try to buy TikTok, as a bid to divorce the popular social-media platform from its Chinese owners gathers momentum in Congress.
• SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft pulled off an extended flight through space on its third test mission, marking major progress for a vehicle that could one day transport astronauts to the moon and beyond.

📰 Other headlines

• Biden Opposition to U.S. Steel Takeover Comes After Months of Lobbying
• The Media World’s Connector-in-Chief Is in a Hollywood Brawl
• S&P 500 Closes Lower After More Hot Inflation Data
• Big Profits and High Prices: There Is a Connection
• Nvidia and AI Have Given the Chip Industry a Lot to Prove
• A Fake Bill Ackman Is Scamming Investors Out of Millions on Facebook
• Self-Driving Cars Enter the Next Frontier: Freeways

• A bipartisan duo of China hawks drew attention when they introduced legislation taking aim at TikTok, but the social-media site isn’t their only target.
• 78%: The percentage of increase in bankruptcies filed by small businesses in February.
• Layoffs and exits outstripped new hires in 2023 at startups for the first time in years, according to one count.
• 🎧 Listen to WSJ Pro’s James Rundle unpack how medical providers have been reeling after Change Healthcare, a company used for insurance billing and payments, got hacked.

Every weekend we select articles that peel back the layers on a compelling business story or make us look at business in a different light.

• Here’s what TikTok tells us about the paradox of markets right now, according to the Financial Times.
• Cities are facing cutbacks as commercial real estate prices tumble, reports the New York Times.
• America’s economy has escaped a hard landing, says the Economist.

Restaurant Brands International, the Toronto-based quick-service restaurant company, appointed Sami Siddiqui to the role of chief financial officer, effective immediately, succeeding Matt Dunnigan, who is leaving the company. Siddiqui has been with the company, which houses the Tim Hortons and Burger King brands, for 11 years. The company said that for eight of those years he served as brand president for Popeyes in Miami, all of the brands in the Asia Pacific region and Tim Hortons in Toronto.

—Adriano Marchese contributed to this newsletter.

The Wall Street Journal's CFO Journal offers corporate leaders and professionals CFO analysis, advice and commentary to make informed decisions. We cover topics including corporate tax accounting, regulation, capital markets, management and strategy.

Follow us on X @WSJCFO. The WSJ CFO Journal team comprises reporters Kristin Broughton, Mark Maurer and Jennifer Williams, and Bureau Chief Walden Siew.

You can reach us by replying to any newsletter, or email Walden at walden.siew@wsj.com.