Good morning. CFO transitions this year are continuing, with tech giant HP on Wednesday naming Karen Parkhill as its next finance chief, effective Aug. 5. Parkhill makes the leap to HP from Medtronic, a Global Fortune 500 firm.
Since 2016, she’s served as EVP and CFO at Medtronic, a global provider of medical products such as cardiac devices, surgical tools, and insulin pumps. It was cofounded more than 70 years ago by the inventor of the battery-powered pacemaker. (Medtronic, which has experienced some turnover recently with high-ranking executives, also announced on Wednesday Parkhill will continue as CFO until Aug. 2 while the company evaluates both internal and external candidates to succeed her.)
Parkhill is making the switch from one of the world’s largest medical devices companies to a software and computing services giant. This just goes to show that what companies want first and foremost in a CFO is someone with financial acumen and leadership capabilities honed through experience, Scott W. Simmons, co-managing partner of the executive search firm Crist Kolder Associates, recently told me. Another example is Anat Ashkenazi, the CFO at pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, who was recently named the next CFO and SVP of Google and Alphabet. “You’ve got to get into an industry, and at a company, that you find exciting and fascinating,” Simmons said.
HP CEO Enrique Lores said in a LinkedIn post on Wednesday that Parkhill’s experience and expertise will help drive continued growth: “I look forward to learning from Karen and partnering with her to advance our Future Ready strategy.”
Parkhill said in a statement that she’s “excited to join HP at such a pivotal time for the company and the industry.”
At HP (no. 82 in the Fortune 500), Parkill succeeds Marie Myers, CFO since 2021 but with the company for more than 20 years. Myers stepped down to join Hewlett Packard Enterprise as EVP and CFO in January. Interim CFO Tim Brown will be returning to his role as the head of print finance.
Parkhill will receive an annual base salary of $950,000 at HP, with an annual cash bonus of 135% of base salary, according to an SEC filing. She’s set to receive a cash signing bonus of $1.5 million—half payable on her six-month anniversary and half on her one-year anniversary.
For the past 13 years, Parkhill has been a CFO at publicly traded companies, but she didn’t take the traditional route to get there. She joined JPMorgan in 1992 and worked in investment banking, gaining global experience in M&A and capital markets. Parkhill then rose to CFO for the commercial banking business at the firm. After five years, she then moved to Comerica as vice chairman and CFO.
When I first sat down for a conversation with Parkhill in 2021, she told me that her love of math and business pointed her in the direction of finance. And, last year, she said that when exploring careers toward the end of college, she realized the most coveted and difficult job to land post-college was in investment banking.
“I am one who continually seeks the next highest challenge,” Parkhill said.
Sheryl Estrada
[email protected]
Leaderboard
Marcos Gabriel was promoted to EVP and CFO at McCormick & Company, Incorporated (NYSE: MKC), effective Dec.1. On that date, Mike Smith will continue with the company as EVP until his retirement on Feb. 28, 2025. Smith has served as EVP and CFO since 2016. Gabriel, who is currently SVP of global finance and capital markets, joined McCormick in 2017 as CFO of the Americas. He also held the role of chief transformation officer. Gabriel also served in a variety of leadership roles at Avon, Unilever, and Eli Lilly across Europe, North, and Latin America.
Kathleen Valiasek, CFO at Local Bounti Corporation (NYSE: LOCL), takes on the additional role of president, effective June 24. Valiasek has been CFO at the indoor agriculture company since April 2021. Previously, she served as CFO and chief business officer at Amyris, a producer of sustainable ingredients for health and beauty markets.
Big Deal
We're in the midst of an M&A recovery, according to PwC’s U.S. Deals 2024 Midyear Outlook. In the first five months of 2024, overall, deal value totaled $535 billion, up nearly 30% from the $412 billion in the same period a year ago.
Motivated in part by AI or energy transition opportunities and challenges, mega-deals are on the upswing as 12 transactions valued at more than $10 billion have been announced year-to-date; and this is the “strongest start to any calendar year in at least a decade,” according to the report.
Another key finding is M&A value involving financial buyers was higher in April than in any month since May 2022. “Dealmakers are starting to get off the sidelines as they accept that the ultra-low rates that shaped the economy during much of the past 15 years won’t be returning any time soon,” the report states.
Going deeper
“For New Ideas, Think Inside (This) Box,” is part of the series “Nano Tools for Leaders,” created in a collaboration between Wharton Executive Education and Wharton’s Center for Leadership and Change Management. In this segment, Penn's David Resnick offers guidance on using helpful constraints to find new solutions to old problems.
Overheard
“Sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists. You get input, and everybody has slightly different opinions.”
—Neil Murray, CEO of Work Dynamics at real estate services group Jones Lang LaSalle, told Fortune in an interview that businesses want workers back in the office, at least in a hybrid model. Murray’s unit consults corporations on a new approach to designing office spaces as “a moment in time of reinvention of space” that emphasizes human behavior.
