Good morning. Taking on the role of CFO for the first time is not an easy task; however, holding this position at Binance ( Binance), the world's largest digital currency exchange, especially after it has been involved in what is considered the biggest theft case in the history of cryptocurrencies, is a completely different matter.
On Saturday, Binance announced that its former Airwallex Vice President of Finance, Justin Yek, will take on the new role of CFO at the company, succeeding Kaiser Ng who has held this position since 2022. Ng will step down to pursue new entrepreneurial projects. Binance stated that this transition has been planned for the past six months and is not related to any recent security vulnerabilities.
This distinction is very important. Fortune Reporters Jeff John Roberts reported that on October 29th, hackers stole an estimated $6.3 billion from the platform. Binance subsequently stated that North Korean hackers planned this attack; they used social engineering and malware to breach the engineers' defenses and obtained system access rights that allowed them to make unauthorized withdrawals.
The losses have been controlled to some extent. Tether and Circle have frozen approximately $2.5 billion in stolen stablecoins. Binance stated that the company has made up for 98% of the stolen tokens through reserve funds and other sources, and users will not bear any losses. For more information, please see here.
But the issues brought about by this incident are not limited to cybersecurity. How strong is Binance's internal control? And how can the exchange convince customers and regulatory authorities that their assets are safe?
All these issues will ultimately end up on the desk of the new CFO.
Yek's resume is ideal for a globally expanding fintech company. At Airwallex, he rose from the position of Head of Strategic Finance and Corporate Development to Vice President of Finance, leading the company's global finance team. Prior to that, he worked in investment banking at Citibank and Morgan Stanley for approximately nine years, participating in over $30 billion in equity, mergers and acquisitions, and debt transactions, based on his LinkedIn credentials.
This represents considerable experience in corporate finance and transaction matching. However, for Yek, the title of CFO is still new to him; he also lacks the experience in cryptocurrency exchanges that Ng possesses, who joined Binance from Kraken.
Cybersecurity is increasingly becoming a financial issue, rather than just a IT issue. The financial consequences of a single vulnerability, including asset losses, customer compensation, regulatory scrutiny, and damage to reputation, can ultimately fall on the CFO. For example, a CFO Signals survey conducted by Deloitte ( Deloitte ) in the third quarter of 2026 found that cybersecurity is the top external concern for financial managers, with 50% of respondents mentioning it, surpassing concerns about the economy and inflation.
On Binance, Yek serves as the first test for CFO; it will be about helping to rebuild that kind of trust which money cannot replace.
Sheryl Estrada
Sheryl.Estrada @ fortune.com
Ranking Table
Dave Wehner has been appointed as the CFO of Fireworks. Fireworks is a AI inference and model training platform that helps companies customize and run open-source models. Wehner joined Fireworks after working at Meta for 14 years, and recently took on the role of Chief Strategy Officer. He joined Meta (which was then called Facebook) in 2012 and served as the company's CFO from 2014 to 2022. At Fireworks, he will be responsible for expanding the company's finance and operations. Fireworks was founded in 2022 by former Meta and Google employees, and in July, it reached a valuation of 17.5 billion US dollars during a Series C financing round.
TransUnion ( NYSE : TRU ) appoints David Gilbert as the interim CFO effective from January 1st, as part of the company's planned leadership transition. The current CFO Todd Cello will continue to serve as the financial director until December 31st, and then work as a full-time consultant until March 1st. Gilbert has over thirty years of experience in TransUnion, and currently holds the position of Senior Vice President and International CFO. He joined TransUnion in 1991 and has held several senior positions in finance and operations. The company has already commenced the selection process for a permanent CFO.
Large Transactions
The financial industry may not be the largest employer of tech talent, but it is competing for such professionals. According to the latest Tech Jobs Report from CompTIA, based on job posting data from Lightcast, in October 2026, financial and insurance companies announced 17,790 tech job vacancies, ranking fifth among all industries.
Professional, scientific, and technical services led with 83,514 job vacancies, followed by manufacturing, administrative and support services, as well as the information and media industries. In October, the total number of active technology positions across all industries was approximately 630,000, which was a slight increase from September.
CompTIA indicates that the demand for positions requiring AI skills is "continuously rising." Looking at the job structure, the changes in demand within the finance team are quite telling. The demand for software developers and engineers has increased by 3,066, system engineers by 3,434, and DevOps engineers by 2,833; however, the number of data analyst positions has decreased by 702. This suggests that employers may be investing more funds in the construction and operation of systems, including AI.
For further reading
Fortune Reporters from Jason Ma report that the board of directors of Nvidia, the leading chip company NVIDIA, has launched an independent investigation into reports that CEO Jensen Huang has become a target of foreign intelligence operations. The committee, composed of independent directors, will oversee the investigation with the assistance of external legal counsel.
Jensen Huang has admitted to being unfaithful to his wife and has apologized to his family and colleagues. There are also reports citing U.S. intelligence assessments that suggest he had a romantic relationship with Alice Huang, an executive at a data center company headquartered in Singapore. The two do not have any familial relationship, and U.S. intelligence agencies reportedly suspect that Alice Huang was collecting information for China.
In a statement, NVIDIA's Board of Directors stated, 'There is no reason to believe that national security or NVIDIA's confidential information has been compromised,' but their investigation 'will examine all available information.' For more details, please see here.
What was heard
This is a humiliating moment for Jensen; it will at least trigger several congressional investigations and put pressure on this stock for various reasons. The key question that investors will ask next is: Will Jensen continue to serve as NVIDIA CEO?
—— Yorkville Ives & Co. Partner and Senior Managing Director, Dan Ives wrote in a memorandum to investors on Sunday.
