“Apple Inc.’s departing chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer presided over a sales boom that filled company coffers with a record cash pile,” Adam Satariano reports for Bloomberg. “His successor, Luca Maestri, inherits a company stung by slowing growth and increasing scrutiny of how it handles that hoard.”
“The Italian-born executive is becoming Apple’s main money man and liaison to Wall Street in June, at a time when the world’s most valuable company is under pressure to reverse a stock slide, ward off activist investors and defend a cash strategy that critics say shields it from paying taxes,” Satariano reports. “‘When you’re the CFO of the number one company in the world, you have a pretty big magnifying glass on you,’ said Laurence Balter, an analyst at Oracle Investment Research, which advises shareholders.”
“Apart from dealing with shareholders, Maestri will manage Apple’s spending as it invests in research and development, and buys billions of dollars of equipment and components to manufacture its products,” Satariano reports. “The Cupertino, California-based company, which has $159 billion in cash, also is in the midst of a buyback and dividend plan that will return $100 billion to shareholders.”
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