Here’s a recap of the most headline worthy and recent hires, departures, and company shakeups of this January and what that could mean for 2023.
Revolut
Revolut is planning to hire a behavioural team that will be referred to as ‘CultureLab’ to address an "aggressive" corporate culture, according
to an article published in
The Guardian. The company also plans on "upgrading" this culture and introducing new "values-based behaviours" with the CultureLab team, which will include an applied behavioural scientist and psychologist.
N26
N26’s chief financial officer
Jan Kemper is leaving the digital bank despite only joining the company 18 months ago after he was brought in to help move towards an IPO and acting as the interim COO after Adrienne Gormley’s departure in 2022. Co-founder Maximilian Tayenthal will take
on the role of COO alongside his job as managing director of N26 Bank while they search for a new CFO.
Ant Group
Alibaba founder
Jack Ma ceded control of Ant Group this month under a corporate restructuring, meaning that his stake in the company will be reduced to 6%. Ma owns 10% of Ant but controls the company through related entities representing 53.46% of the shares of Ant Group.
Under the restructuring he will cede this control by transferring voting rights to independent Ant executives. Ant has been in Chinese regulators' crosshairs for years. In late 2020, a planned $37 billion IPO was derailed by moves to impose tighter restrictions
on fintech firms entering the banking market.
HM Treasury
The
UK Treasury is advertising for a candidate to steer the Government's approach to the introduction of a central bank digital currency. With the Bank of England, the Treasury is working through the CBDC Taskforce to explore the case for a digital pound. The
two-year job, can be based in London or Darlington on a salary of £61,260 - £66,500 per year. The Treasury will be running a drop-in session for potential applicants, on 6 February 13:30-14:30, to give candidates greater insight about the role.
Open Banking Implementation Entity
Marion King will succeed Charlotte Crosswell as chair and trustee of the Open Banking Implementation Entity. King will step into the post at the start of February when Crosswell departs to take over the chair at the Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology
(CFIT), an organisation created on the advice of the Kalifa Review. She will be focused on protecting the ongoing CMA Order requirements and the consideration and potential implementation of the Joint Regulatory Oversight Committee’s (JROC) decisions on the
future long-term regulatory framework for Open Banking in the UK.
Feedzai
Paige McNamee exclusively reported on
Feedzai’s workforce cut amid cited restructuring. While exact numbers aren’t clear, teams in several countries were affected. The cuts come despite the CEO Nuno Sebastiao telling a company-wide ‘all-hands-on-deck’ meeting last month that the organisation’s
performance was strong and that employees should not be worried about their roles. The company has recently been rolling out employee-friendly policies such as mental health, menstruation, and menopause leave, building on a 2021 decision to move to a four-day
week.
Mollie
Mollie appointed Klarna's former chief technology officer Koen Köppen as CEO this month after the departure of Shane Happach. Köppen, previously the CTO of Klarna for five years, joined Mollie in the same role in May. One of Köppen's key responsibilities
will be to increase the pace of product development and delivery across the business. Mollie’s current CEO is also leaving the company to take up a leadership role in Asia.
Marqeta
Marqeta has a new CEO as of yesterday.
Simon Khalaf joined the company in June 2022 as CPO, and with over 30 years of experience in scaling up large firms such as Flurry, Twilio, Verizon, Yahoo, and Novell, Khalaf succeeds founder and chairman Jason Gardner, who will become executive chairman.
In other news, Todd Pollak, who has experience at Google and Ancestry, has been named chief revenue officer.
Copper
Copper has appointed the former chancellor of the exchequer
Philip Hammond as chairman this month. Hammond was hired by Copper as a special advisor to the board in October 2021. Since then, the firm has grown from 50 to over 300 people, doubling revenues. In appointing Hammond, Copper will be leaning on his connections
and high public profile to make the case for the need to connect traditional finance with distributed ledger technology and reform the UK’s regulatory framework governing digital assets.