PayPal, Fiserv, Fidelity National Information Services and Klarna all have changed up their board members lately as the industry’s fast-paced evolution advances this year.
Digital payments pioneer PayPal last week named Joy Chik, who is president of identity and network access at Microsoft, as a new board member, increasing the size of its board from 11 to 12 members, according to a March 10 press release.
“PayPal is aiming to radically change commerce over the next decade by increasing our velocity of innovation and accelerating our integration of artificial intelligence across our product suite and the global enterprise,” said PayPal CEO Alex Chriss said in the release. “Joy is an expert in technology and AI, and her counsel as a new member of the Board will help us harness cutting-edge technology.”
The company had originally enlarged its board to a dozen when Enrique Lores joined in 2021, and then after some other changes, including the resignation of former board chair, John Donahoe, there was a vacancy that Chik has now filled, a PayPal spokesperson said.
“Our 12 directors provide diverse perspectives, valuable insight and expertise and skills that are both relevant to our business and complementary to each other,” the PayPal spokesperson said by email Tuesday.
Josh Crist, a co-managing partner at the Chicago executive recruitment firm Crist Kolder, said companies often change up their board members when they’re contemplating mergers and acquisitions, and that’s particularly true when they’re adding or subtracting directors.
“M&A drives board change as companies mold their boards as to what they will become, or what they want to become,” Crist said by email in response to questions.
If the companies are scaling up, they might want to add a few independents to the board, Crist explained. But if the companies are contracting, they may want to become more nimble and exchange older members for younger ones, he said.
On the expansion front, Fiserv announced an acquisition Wednesday, saying it would buy the Dutch payments company CCV, allowing it to expand its Clover point-of-sale services in Europe.
Just a few days earlier, on Saturday March 15, the company’s board appointed Stephanie Cohen, the chief strategy officer at the connectivity company Cloudflare, as an independent director. She also previously worked for the investment bank Goldman Sachs as global head of its platform solutions and global co-head of consumer and wealth management, according to a March 17 filing by Fiserv with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
It wasn’t clear whether Cohen is replacing an exiting board member, or the company is enlarging the board. A spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
FIS, which last year spun off the merchant services business Worldpay, decreased the size of its board to nine directors from ten in connection with one of its board members deciding not to continue in his role.
At FIS, board member Lee Adrean, chair of the board’s audit committee, told the company last week that he wouldn’t stand for re-election at the annual meeting this year, according to an FIS filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company appointed board member Nicole Anasenes to the audit committee chair post, effectively immediately.
Adrean, a former chief financial officer for the credit bureau Equifax and a former director at merchant payments company Worldpay, said he didn’t have any disagreements with the company on “operations, policies or practices,” according to the March 14 filing.
A spokesperson for FIS didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Also on March 10, Klarna said in a press release that it had added two new board members, Niclas Neglen and Markus Villig, which came just days before it disclosed further information about its planned initial public offering. Those appointments were almost certainly in connection with the IPO planning, Crist said.
