CFOVILLE

Terri Fujinaga

Four-time WNBA championship team the Seattle Storm are a juggernaut of a women’s professional basketball team, boasting iconic players like Sue Bird, Breanna Stewart, and Lauren Jackson since its founding in 2000.

Last year the WNBA had some explosive growth. WNBA viewership rose to 63.2 million unique viewers, and the Seattle Storm’s viewership grew 68% in “the strongest year in franchise history,” according to the team. Total WNBA attendance was up 33% YoY, to 3.1 million.

In Forbes’s May ranking of the most valuable WNBA teams, the Storm showed up fourth, at $430 million, with revenue of $28 million.

CFO Terri Fujinaga joined the Storm as its CFO in 2024 after a career spent in public accounting, consulting, and stints as an advisor or in-house finance exec, including as CFO of a sustainable agricultural products company.

She never intended to break into professional sports finance, Fujinaga told CFO Brew, but the opportunity with the Storm was “an irresistible combination” of her favorite things: athletics, business, and community impact.

Fujinaga started as an investor in the Storm’s practice facility.—DL

      

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M&A

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Private equity was still doing deals in Q2, but firms stayed away from larger transactions amidst some market headwinds, including (especially!) risky AI bets.

That’s according to Cherry Bekaert’s midyear report on US PE dealmaking, which showed deal count grew 11.5% YoY in the second quarter, to 2,384, while aggregate deal value dropped to $177.3 billion from $233 billion in Q2 2025. Sponsors deployed about $461 billion in H1, the report noted.

Behind the fall in deal value were “three shocks,” according to Cherry Bekaert, which include the Federal Reserve keeping rates “higher for longer,” “energy-driven inflation” from the war in Iran, and AI-related risks. “The combined effect of these forces is evident in the size of deals, not deal count,” the CPA firm noted.

“Sponsors retreated from the large, financing-dependent transactions that move the value needle, even as smaller deals kept closing at a steady pace,” the report said.

Scott Moss, a partner and transaction advisory leader at Cherry Bekaert, told CFO Brew, “the focus on middle-market transactions is not something unusual…and probably something that would be expected given the current state of the environment.”

AI exposure assessment is now part of standard due diligence.—AZ

      

WORKFORCE TRENDS

Illustration: Shannon May, Photos: Unsplash

For last week’s edition of “Where are they now?” HR Brew checked in with Codeword, a company that piloted a four-day workweek in 2024.

As some other companies have rolled back flexibility in recent years, the communications design agency has doubled down on its program, dubbed “soft Fridays,” which has since blossomed into a year-round initiative embedded in the company’s culture, the agency’s chief of staff, Alli Ray, told HR Brew.

“Our team has really appreciated the autonomy where they’re able to work when they need to work, but they can use the time that they have for their lives,” Ray said. “We trust you to get your work done. We don’t need to know that you’re sitting at your metal box nine to five.”

What’s changed? When Codeword started “soft Fridays,” the agency wanted it to go beyond a new perk to reshape how employees think about work, Ray previously told HR Brew. The goal, she said, was to give employees more time to themselves so the hours they were working would be more productive and efficient.

Codeword is also encouraging employees to limit end-of-week meetings, HR Brew reports.—MC

      

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market forces

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top finance reads.

Stat. 5.9 million. That’s how many jobs the US economy is expected to add between 2025 and 2035. The biggest gains will be in healthcare and social assistance to help with the aging population. (Axios)

Quote. “The responsibility for 65 months of sustained, elevated inflation sits squarely with the central bank—and that is where it belongs.”—Kevin Warsh, chair of the Federal Reserve, on Friday at the Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium (New York Times)

Read. Australian scientists are developing paramedic cyborg cockroaches, or “paraborgs,” to deliver critical medications to people stranded by earthquakes, collapsed buildings, or other disasters. (Reuters)

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