By CultureBanx Team
- Mark Mason to become Citigroup CFO in March 2019
- Jeffrey Davis Steps down as JCPenney’s CFO
From Wall street banks to main street retailers, CFOs are in high demand. Citigroup (C +0.26%) has named Mark Mason as its next CFO and JCPenney’s (JCP +2.41%) finance chief Jeffrey Davis left at the beginning of the month.
Why This Matters: This is a significant changing of the guards for Mason since he will be replacing one of the longest tenured bank executives. He currently serves as the CFO of the institutional clients group, which accounted for more than 50% of the bank’s net revenues in the first half of 2018.
Mason will be stepping into this CFO role as investor frustration continues to grow with Citi’s lackluster stock performance. Reuters reported, shares of the company trade for about 1.2 times tangible book value compared with 2.1 times for shares of JPMorgan.
There’s some comfort in the fact that he’s been CFO of half the company
However, this is familiar territory for Mason because he was a deputy to Citigroup’s CEO Michael Corbat during the time when he ran Citi Holdings. “There’s some comfort in the fact that he’s been CFO of half the company,” said Brian Foran, an analyst at Autonomous Research.
For JCPenney their struggles have been well documented from the more than $4 billion of debt on its balance sheet, to battling with consumers changing preferences for online shopping. Davis is the third C-suite executive to leave the legacy retailer this year. Prior to Davis’s role at JCPenney, he was in a similar job at Darden Restaurants and also served as the CFO at Walmart Stores U.S.
What’s Next: Mason will begin is new role in March 2019, which is when the current CFO is expected to retire. JCPenney has started a search for a new CFO and Davis didn’t specify where he’s going next. It will be interesting to see if he lands at Lowe’s and teams up with former Penney’s CEO Marvin Ellison once again.
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