Good morning. Ben Weiss here, filling in for Sheryl.
“I am a bit of a boomerang,” Peggy Alford told Fortune.
In the early aughts, Alford worked at eBay, where she focused on mergers-and-acquisitions due diligence. She left in 2005 but, as of Monday, she’s back at the online auction house—as the newly minted CFO.
She returns to eBay as the company continues to return to its roots. The marketplace started in 1995 as a home for quirky collector’s items, like rare Pokémon cards, niche Beatles posters, and vintage leather jackets. But, as it rode the dot-com boom to new financial heights, the e-commerce giant expanded beyond just niche items.
“For a little while, eBay was trying to become the place where you buy and sell everything,” Alford said. “And now the focus is on, ‘Let’s go back to the rich history of collectors and people that need a personalized, customized experience.’”
Instead of trying to compete with the everything marketplace Amazon, eBay has now tried to refocus on secondhand goods, like vintage designer fashion, under CEO Jamie Iannone. Over the past two years, for example, it’s sponsored the Met Gala, where celebrities at the fashion spectacle say they’re wearing Courrèges—and eBay.
In many ways, Alford’s career tracks with eBay’s almost three-decades-long history.
After she left the online auction house in 2005, she entered the C-suite of Rent.com, an apartment and homes rental listings website that eBay acquired for $415 million in 2004.
Then, in 2011, she jumped ship to another eBay acquisition: PayPal. The online auction house had acquired the fintech giant in 2002 for $1.5 billion, and Alford had helped vet the purchase when she was first at eBay, she said.
At PayPal, which eBay spun off into a separate company in 2015, Alford rose through the ranks to become an executive vice president. She parlayed her experience to land a spot on the board of social media giant Meta.
Now, as she decorates her brand new office in eBay’s headquarters in San Jose, California, Alford is focused on advising eBay on one of its newest focuses: AI.
The buzzy tech vertical is something other eBay executives have been touting. Nitzan Mekel, chief AI officer at the online auction house, recently unveiled a personalized AI shopper at Fortune Brainstorm AI in London.
And Alford didn’t discount the possibility of AI deals once she settles into her new role. “We’ll obviously be looking at M&A as well,” she said. “We have a rich balance sheet, and so the ability to make strategic investments in M&A is an area that will be definitely in focus.”
Have a good Monday.
Ben Weiss
benjamin.weiss@fortune.com
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Leaderboard
Fortune 500 Power Moves
Kellanova (No. 272) announced that CFO Amit Banati is resigning from the company, effective May 12, to become CFO of Kenvue. JohnRenwick, the company’s VP of Investor Relations and Corporate Planning, is now acting SVP and CFO of Kellanova, effective May 9.
Every Friday morning, the weekly Fortune 500 Power Moves column tracks Fortune 500 company C-suite shifts—see the most recent edition.
More notable moves
Mark Dentinger was appointed SVP and CFO of Skyworks Solutions, Inc. (Nasdaq: SWKS), effective June 2. Dentinger succeeds Kris Sennesael, who stepped down from his role as CFO on May 9, to pursue another opportunity. Dentinger brings nearly 20 years of CFO experience. He most recently served as CFO of Veritas, where he led the company’s global finance organization. Before that Veritas, he served as CFO at companies including InvenSense, KLA-Tencor, and BEA Systems, Inc.
Tim Dieffenbacher was appointed CFO of Keller Williams Realty, LLC a global real estate franchise. Dieffenbacher previously worked alongside Chris Czarnecki, CEO and president of Keller Williams at Broadstone Net Lease (NYSE: BNL) and Broadstone Real Estate (BRE), where they partnered to scale the business and build best-in-class operational infrastructure. Dieffenbacher served as SVP, chief accounting officer, and treasurer at BNL and BRE.
Big Deal
After weekend talks in Switzerland, the U.S. and China agreed on a 90-day pause on measures, and tariffs will come down from 145% to 30%—a 10% baseline rate and a separate 20% tariff on China intended to deter the export of fentanyl. China cut its levies on U.S. goods from 125% to 10%. “Great progress was made,” President Donald Trump said in a social media post.
“Both countries represented their national interests very well,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Monday during a press conference in Geneva, Reuters reported. “We both have an interest in balanced trade; the U.S. will continue moving towards that.”
Going deeper
Deloitte’s first quarter 2025 North American CFO Signals survey reveals that finance chiefs identify employee engagement (50%) and lack of skilled talent (45%) among the biggest workforce challenges in meeting C-suite expectations for their finance departments. The findings are based on a survey of 200 CFOs across five sectors who work at organizations with at least $1 billion in revenues.
When CFOs were asked to name their biggest worries related to pipeline concerns about accountants, increased workload for existing employees was the top response (44%). Loss of credibility with institutional and private investors was the second most cited concern (42%) about pipeline issues for accountants. Third on the list was the erosion of board confidence in finance (41%).
Just 15% of respondents said their organizations are not experiencing a shortage of accountants or other finance talent. One solution could be to deploy technology to automate tasks, with 79% of CFOs surveyed saying they will likely use generative artificial intelligence in the coming two years.
“Managing through a talent shortage in finance may not be straightforward,” according to the report. “Evolving staffing strategies will likely help CFOs fill some gaps. Still, the lack of new or experienced accountants or overworked employees could remain for a while.”
Overheard
“When I did software, I felt like, ‘Okay, this software’s empowering.’ That’s mostly a good thing. But the beauty of philanthropy is that it’s not constrained by this profit motive.”
—Bill Gates, cofounder of Microsoft and the Gates Foundation, told Fortune in an interview that he has decided to give “virtually all my wealth”—about $100 billion—to the foundation within the next 20 years, before the foundation closes its doors on Dec. 31, 2045.
