Dive Brief:
- Dutch digital payments processor Adyen said Tuesday that it has hired Niclas Neglen as its new chief financial officer, but the former Klarna Group CFO won’t take the post until Feb. 1 of next year, according to a Tuesday press release. The company also named Neglen to its management board.
- Hwa Tsao, who has been serving as Adyen’s interim CFO since the exit of Ethan Tandowsky on Aug. 31, will continue in that role until Neglen arrives, the release said. Thereafter, Tsao will lead Adyen’s finance operations as the company’s senior vice president of group finance, the release said.
- ”Niclas understands a company like ours,” said the release from the Amsterdam-based company. “That's what gives us confidence he's the right fit for our business, our strategy, and our culture.”
Dive Insight:
Neglen’s exit from the BNPL behemoth Klarna was announced last month, on the same day the company gave a bleaker view of growth prospects for the year. Klarna revised gross merchandise volume for the year to between $149 billion and $151 billion, below its prior view of more than $155 billion, as part of its second-quarter earnings report.
“Despite the somewhat unorthodox nature of Mr. Neglen's long transition period (i.e., where he will remain a C-Level executive for ~5 months at a large Fintech peer), his appointment is not surprising, given extensive experience in finance and payments,” Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Ramsey El Assal said in a Tuesday note to the firm’s investment clients.
Still, the analyst also pointed out that Klarna’s stock performance has been “underwhelming” since that company’s initial public offering last year. The value of the shares have declined nearly 70%.
Before joining Klarna in 2021, Neglen was CFO and chief operating officer for Europe, the Middle East and Asia for the European bank HSBC’s private bank, leading its strategic corporate finance and operational transformation in the region. Neglen also held senior financial positions at General Electric over 13 years for various global business units.
“Through his work in high-growth fintech and complex international financial institutions, he has built a track record that extends well beyond traditional financial steering,” the Adyen release said.
Adyen also reaffirmed its financial guidance on Tuesday, saying in its release that there were no changes to its “standing financial objectives.”
Adyen’s clients include McDonald’s, Uber and Booking.com, according to its website.
Adyen has been battling a host of digital processing competitors, including legacy companies like Fiserv, as well as fintechs like Stripe and Shift4 Payments, all of which are seeking to scale operations in the U.S.
At the same time, Adyen has been experiencing upheaval in its leadership ranks. In May, Adyen said that Tandowsky would be exiting in August. Then, in June, Adyen named Shepherd “Shep” Smith as the head of North America, after Davi Strazza left that role the prior year. And in July, Adyen appointed Gayathri Rajan as its new chief product officer.
The company is also pursuing acquisitions to boost growth. In June, Adyen said it would purchase San Francisco-based enterprise billing company Orb for $335 million in cash. In April, Adyen agreed to buy the merchant services firm Talon.One, which manages loyalty programs and incentives, for €750 million (about $870 million).
Meanwhile, Klarna said it had begun a search for a New York-based CFO. A spokesperson for Klarna didn’t have an update on that effort.
