Dive Brief:
- Kaiser Ng stepped down from his role as Binance’s CFO after five years in the crypto exchange’s top finance seat with the aim of founding an undisclosed venture of his own, he said Sunday in a LinkedIn post.
- The departure is part of a transition plan the company has implemented during the past six months, Binance co-founder and co-CEO Yi He told Bloomberg in a statement, noting former Airwallex VP of finance Justin Yek has taken the businesses’ top finance seat. Ng’s departure comes about a week after the world’s largest crypto trading platform said hackers siphoned approximately $6.3 billion in digital assets from the platform using a combination of malicious software and social engineering tactics.
- “After five years as CFO of Binance, I have decided to go build something of my own,” Ng wrote on LinkedIn. He stated that “moving from the CFO's chair to the founder's [chair] is a leap, and I take it with humility. I deeply believe it is where I can make a greater contribution to AI and Web3.”
Dive Insight:
Yek joined Binance in May, according to his LinkedIn profile. He began his career at Citi, where he was based in Hong Kong and served as an associate in its industrials investment banking segment
Kaiser “leaves behind a world-class finance team, and I’m grateful for his partnership and support throughout the transition over the past few months,” Yek wrote in a Sunday post announcing the appointment on his LinkedIn page. “I look forward to leading this talented team as we continue to scale responsibly and advance Binance’s mission globally.”
The timing of the CFO’s departure is “suspicious,” especially given lingering questions surrounding internal controls and governance “or lack thereof” at the company, Shawn Cole, president of boutique executive search firm Cowen Partners, told CFO Dive in an email.
It’s unclear how much responsibility the CFO might have had when it comes to managing and safeguarding cyberwallets, Cole said, noting “the answer may lie in traditional banking standards and established accountability and controls for the theft of cash or other financial assets.”
“Regardless, the timing reflects poorly on the CFO and could damage their career prospects, especially with the announcement coming so soon after the breach,” Cole said. “From a corporate communications standpoint, the timing is either remarkably poor or intentional.”
The CFO transition coincides with efforts by Binance handle the fallout from the Oct. 29 cyber incident. Wrongdoers used a combination of tactics to siphon more than $6 billion in value from customer accounts on the exchange.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation blamed a North Korean hacker group it is terming “TraderTraitor” for the cyber incident. The bureau said in an Oct. 31 cyber alert that “the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) was responsible for the theft of more than $6 billion USD in virtual assets from cryptocurrency exchange Binance.”
As of Oct. 31, 98% of the affected tokens have been replenished, Binance said in an initial security report of the incident released Nov. 3. The attackers “combined a range of techniques” to execute the hack, including social engineering via fake job recruitment interviews and malicious software, the crypto exchange platform said in the report. They also “compromised internal AI tooling.”
In one example of a ruse used in the attack, a Binance software engineer was contacted through a legitimate job search platform by a fraudster posing as a project director, according to the report. The fraudulent candidate shared a social media account with their interviewers, which included personal photos and anecdotes in order to build trust, a tactic which was “more advanced and deceptive than previously seen social engineering approaches,” Binance said.
The company suspended withdrawals from the platform after the incident, restoring such services in phases beginning Sunday Nov. 1, when users pulled an estimated $3.6 billion in funds from the platform, the Guardian reported.
Binance is taking several steps to address the security incident, including working with a third-party cybersecurity party to conduct a “comprehensive review” and recommend additional security measures, according to the Nov. 3 update.
Binance did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the CFO announcement.
