Good morning. Starbucks has scored big by hiring Cathy Smith, a CFO with extensive experience, who now has a vital role in bringing the company back to its former glory.
Smith recently began her tenure at Starbucks, coming from her role at Nordstrom as finance chief, after working for health insurer Bright Health Group as CFO and chief administrative officer, which has since rebranded as NeueHealth. Smith previously served as CFO of retailers Target, Walmart International, and GameStop.
A new Fortune article by my colleague Phil Wahba delves into how Smith plans to help transform the coffee shop chain of which she’s been a longtime customer.
“I can’t tell you how many decades Starbucks has been like my personal third place,” Smith tells Wahba. “I knew I could go into a Starbucks, grab a great cup of coffee, sit down at a table, and do whatever I needed to.” Her go-to drink is an Americano with a splash of 2% milk, she says.
Smith saw a “drift” away in recent years from what had made Starbucks a cultural phenomenon: problems such as less dependable service at stores, or an environment that made its cafés less of an inviting “third place” beyond work and home, Wahba writes. “I had started to miss that great coffeehouse experience,” Smith says.
Smith intends to help Starbucks shake off a long slump, with four straight quarters of same-store sales declines. Its shares have fallen 34% since their all-time high. And it has a much weaker hold on customers. Since his appointment last summer, CEO Brian Niccol, formerly chief executive of Chipotle, is trying to reinvigorate a brand “whose bloated menu, often chaotic in-store service, and frequent forays in the culture wars have cost its customers,” Wahba writes.
To find out how Smith intends to use her years of experience to position Starbucks for growth, you can read the article here.
Like Starbucks, companies are vying for top CFOs as the demand is outpacing supply. At the same time, the job of CFO is becoming more complex, Jenna Fisher, co-head of Russell Reynolds Associates’ (RRA) global financial officers practice, recently told me. The broadening of the position now can mean taking on an additional role like chief operating officer or having the IT team report to the CFO for example.
That’s part of why many companies want finance chiefs who have vast experience. In 2024, 40% of global CFO appointments were experienced CFOs—the highest percentage in six years, according to RRA.
Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com
Leaderboard
Tim Murphy will be stepping down from his role as CFO of Repay Holdings Corporation (Nasdaq: RPAY) a provider of integrated payment processing solutions, effective May 15. Murphy is pursuing an opportunity outside of the payments industry with a private equity-backed company. Upon his departure from the company, Thomas Sullivan will be appointed as interim CFO until a permanent replacement can be identified. Sullivan is currently the company’s chief accounting officer.
Ravi Jani was promoted to CFO of The Real Brokerage Inc. (Nasdaq: REAX), a technology platform for real estate transactions, effective immediately. Jani succeeds Michelle Ressler as CFO. Jani brings over 15 years of experience. He joined Real in 2023 as VP of investor relations and financial planning and analysis. Before joining Real, Jani served as VP of investor relations at Blade Air Mobility, Inc.
Big Deal
BCG has released the findings of its latest Investor Perspectives surveys to give corporate executives and boards a sense of investors’ perspectives in this rapidly changing environment. Just 20% of investors are bullish on 2025, down from 65% in November.
Almost all (97%) of investors rank U.S. federal policies, such as tax legislation, tariffs, and job cuts, as a key factor that will influence the U.S. equity markets, with investors evenly split on whether the market has overreacted or underracted to policy developments.
“The new tariff regime and resulting market volatility have significantly impacted investor expectations,” Jeff Kotzen, BCG’s global lead of shareholder value said in a statement.
Concerns about leverage remain significant, with 73% of investors now avoiding companies carrying net debt that is higher than three times EBITDA (up from 59% in November) and 73% considering rollover risk (vs. 62% in November).
However, investors still expect companies to deliver on earnings while building long-term resilience, he said. Eighty-one percent expect companies to meet or exceed near-term guidance. At the same time, they’re prioritizing long-term growth, margin preservation, and supply chain resilience.
Another key finding: 80% of investors support companies investing in innovation and go-to-market strategies, even if that affects margins short term.
The data is based on BCG surveys of 150 U.S. investors conducted on March 24–25, and April 8–9. They represent investment firms that have more than $5 trillion in combined assets under management.
Going deeper
“The Trump era has been a bust for private equity—that’s one reason PE is turning to retail” is a new report by Fortune’s Luisa Beltran. “Private equity firms are facing another hard year for fundraising as tariffs and a choppy economy makes it harder to cash out on deals,” Beltran writes. “Amid these headwinds, some firms believe they have found a new source of hard-to-find capital: retail investors, who have long been excluded from the world of private big business deals that are the PE world’s bread and butter.”
Overheard
“My entire business, for 21 years, has been showing every day people that you and I can actually get better results than fancy New York City money managers.”
—Finance expert Ramit Sethi told Fortune in an interview regarding how Gen Z can follow in his footsteps. Sethi became a self-made millionaire in his twenties. He stars in the Netflix documentary series How to Get Rich, and is the New York Times best-selling author of I Will Teach You To Be Rich.
