PayPal (PYPL) – Chriss’ Shake Up
New CEO Alex Chriss is shaking up the structure of PayPal. He’s driving more reporting transparency, more obvious segment organization and more focus. To that I say thank you. The 3 newly formed groups will be Consumer, Small Business and Large Enterprise. Consumer and Small Business will both focus on unifying the maze of disparate tools that PayPal provides to their respective stakeholders. The large enterprise segment will clearly also focus on product excellence, but with an added emphasis on margin expansion within Braintree.
As part of the news, PayPal also made a series of executive team announcements. Isabel Cruz will be the firm’s new Chief People Officer and will lead its global real estate strategy. She comes from Walmart where she was a Senior VP (SVP) and “People Leader” for its Tech, Services and Corporate teams (30,000 people). Before that, she spent 20 years at General Electric climbing the ranks. Importantly, Kausik Rajgopal, whom she will replace, is remaining with PayPal as its new Executive VP (EVP) of Strategy, Corporate Development and Partnerships. Always good when executives from the old team (who are wanted) decide to stay through leadership changes.
Michelle Gill was named the new EVP and General Manager of the Small Business segment. Gill previously worked with Chriss at Intuit as the SVP of QuickBooks and its Money Platform. Before that, she was EVP of Consumer Lending and Capital Markets at SoFI. Per the release, she was a driving force behind SoFi reorganizing its balance sheet to power more lending growth “despite regulatory headwinds.” Unsurprisingly, she was with Goldman Sachs (with SoFi CEO Anthony Noto) for 14 years before that as its co-lead of Structured Financing.
Diego Scotti will be the new EVP and General Manager of the Consumer Group. He comes from Verizon where he was the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). He held “top marketing roles” at American Express before that. Finally, current PayPal employee Frank Keller was promoted to SVP of the large enterprise segment.
The new hires boast impressive resumes and the retained talent points to Chriss jumpstarting a positive culture at PayPal. Is this massive news and an “all clear” to restart adding to my position? Not yet. But this is all positive.
To see the complete earnings report, check the SEC filings here.
