Good morning. Taking on a CFO role for the first time is no small feat. Doing it at Binance, the world’s largest digital currency exchange, in the aftermath of what has been described as the biggest heist in crypto history, is quite another.
Justin Yek, a former VP of finance at Airwallex, will become Binance’s new CFO, succeeding Kaiser Ng, who has held the position since 2022 and is stepping down to pursue a new venture, the company said on Saturday. Binance co-CEO Yi He said in a statement that a transition plan had been “implemented over the last half year.”
On Oct. 29, hackers drained an estimated $6.3 billion from the platform, Fortune’s Jeff John Roberts reported. Binance later said North Korean hackers orchestrated the attack, using social engineering and malicious software to compromise engineers and gain access to systems that enabled unauthorized withdrawals.
The damage was partly contained. Tether and Circle froze about $2.5 billion in stolen stablecoins. Binance says it has replenished 98% of the stolen coins through reserve funds and other sources, and that users won’t bear the losses. Read more here.
But, the incident brings questions that go beyond cybersecurity. How strong are Binance’s internal controls? And how can the exchange convince customers and regulators that their assets are safe?
Those are questions that will inevitably land on the new CFO’s desk.
Yek brings a résumé suited to a growing global fintech. At Airwallex, he progressed from head of strategic finance and corporate development to VP of finance, leading the company’s global finance team. Before that, he spent about nine years in investment banking at Citi and Morgan Stanley, working on more than $30 billion in equity, M&A and debt transactions, according to his LinkedIn profile.
That’s substantial experience in corporate finance and dealmaking. But the CFO title is new to Yek, and he lacks the crypto-exchange experience of Ng, who joined Binance from Kraken.
Cybersecurity is increasingly a finance issue, not just an IT concern. The financial consequences of a breach, including lost assets, customer remediation, regulatory scrutiny and reputational damage, can ultimately fall on the CFO. For example, Deloitte’s Q3 2026 CFO Signals survey found cybersecurity was the top external concern for finance chiefs, cited by 50%, ahead of the economy and inflation.
At Binance, Yek’s first test as CFO will be helping restore the trust that money alone can’t replace.
Sheryl Estrada
Sheryl.Estrada@fortune.com
Leaderboard
Dave Wehner was appointed CFO of Fireworks, an AI inference and model-training platform that helps companies customize and run open models. Wehner joins Fireworks after 14 years at Meta, where he most recently served as chief strategy officer. He joined Meta, then called Facebook, in 2012 and was the company's CFO from 2014 to 2022. At Fireworks, he will be tasked with scaling the company's finances and operations. Founded in 2022 by former Meta and Google employees, Fireworks was valued at $17.5 billion in a Series D round in July.
David Gilbert was appointed interim CFO of TransUnion (NYSE: TRU), an information and insights company, effective Jan. 1, as part of a planned leadership transition. Current CFO Todd Cello will remain finance chief through Dec. 31, and will then serve as a full-time advisor through March 1. Gilbert brings more than three decades of TransUnion experience. He currently serves as SVP and International CFO. Gilbert joined TransUnion in 1991 and has held several senior roles across finance and operations. The company initiated a search for a permanent CFO.
Big Deal
Finance may not be the biggest employer of tech talent, but it's competing for that talent. Finance and insurance companies posted 17,790 tech job openings in October 2026, fifth among industries, according to CompTIA's latest Tech Jobs Report, which is based on Lightcast job-posting data.
Professional, scientific and technical services led by a wide margin with 83,514 postings, followed by manufacturing, administrative and support services, and information and media. Across all industries, active tech postings totaled about 630,000 in October, a slight increase from September.
Postings that mention AI skills "continue to rise," CompTIA said. The mix of roles is telling for finance teams. Demand grew for software developers and engineers (up 3,066 from September), systems engineers (up 3,434) and DevOps engineers (up 2,833). Postings for data analysts fell by 702. That suggests employers may be putting more money into building and running systems, including AI.
Going deeper
AI chip leader Nvidia's board has opened an independent investigation into reports that CEO Jensen Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence campaign, Fortune’s Jason Ma writes. A committee of independent directors, assisted by outside counsel, will oversee the inquiry.
Huang has acknowledged being unfaithful to his wife and apologized to his family and colleagues. Separately, reports citing U.S. intelligence assessments allege that he had a romantic relationship with Alice Huang, an executive at Singapore-based data center company Megaspeed. The two are not related, and U.S. intelligence reportedly suspects Alice Huang of gathering information for China.
In a statement, Nvidia's board said it "has no reason to believe that either national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised," but that its inquiry "will examine all available information." Read more here.
Overheard
"This is a black eye moment for Jensen and will spark multiple congressional inquiries at a minimum and will create an overhang on the stock for a myriad of reasons. The key question investors will be asking is: Will Jensen remain CEO of Nvidia?"
—Dan Ives, partner and senior managing director at Yorkville Ives & Co., wrote in a Sunday investor note.