CFOVILLE

Macrina Kgil

It’s been a busy first couple of years for Macrina Kgil as CFO of Figure Technology Solutions.

Kgil joined Figure, a blockchain-native financial services firm, in December 2024, and got straight to work preparing an initial public offering. In September 2025, the month of its launch, Figure’s shares reached the $40 range on NASDAQ.

So, you know, she’s really eased into her role.

“Of course, I covered the foundational work that needs to be done by the CFO to be able to get a company ready to be public,” Kgil told CFO Brew. This wasn’t her first IPO, as she previously helped take consumer lender Springleaf Financial public in 2013.

But the Figure IPO was different, she said, in that it presented a potential messaging challenge: walking investors through Figure’s business model and helping them understand the business opportunities ahead of it. Figure partners with lenders to originate loans, then uses blockchain technology to tokenize the loans and sell them to third parties or securitization vehicles.

“Those were all novel concepts that we were talking to investors about,” she noted.

Financial investors heard about the advantages of not putting the loans on the balance sheet.—AZ

      

Sponsored By Mizuho Americas

At Mizuho Americas’ annual Technology Conference in New York this past June, investors and execs from leading public and private companies gathered to unpack what’s next for growth, productivity, and security in a world being shaped by AI.

IBM CEO Aravind Krishna delivered a contrarian take worth pausing on: Rather than gutting entry-level roles, IBM is tripling its intake of young talent. His logic? They’ll be the most adept users of AI. Full stop.

David Golub of Golub Capital offered a different take. AI may still be in early innings, but it’ll create real concentration fast.

Meanwhile, speakers were candid about the elephant in the room. Markets have powered through macroeconomic and geopolitical turbulence so far. But the question is when, or if, that catches up.

Learn more about the conference.

INFLATION

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There’s no “I” in team, but there is an “I” in inflation—and CFOs seem obsessed with talking about it.

Leading up to July, it was clear CFOs were still worried about inflation. In two CFO surveys—one from Deloitte and the other from Duke University and the Federal Reserve Banks of Richmond and Atlanta—inflation was a top concern cited by CFOs during mid-May to early June.

So, how’s July looking? Same old, essentially. At least, that’s what we’ve heard on second-quarter earnings calls to date.

Take PepsiCo. When the beverage giant’s CEO, Ramon Laguarta, was asked for an update on how US consumers were responding to “rising inflationary pressures,” he noted that “in the US, we’re seeing the consumer changing behaviors, basically an acceleration of some of the behaviors we saw in the past,” explaining that the company has “seen a slowdown of the conversion of traffic into purchases” in some channels.

Whether or not that will change in the coming months “all depends on the price of gas,” Laguarta noted on PepsiCo’s July 9 call.

Airline execs had a different take on rising costs.—NP

      

DATA PRIVACY

Morning Brew Inc.

TL;DR: For better or worse (probably worse), a new productivity trend has arrived: using AI tools to record, transcribe, and analyze every single conversation. Unsurprisingly, it’s a habit the unknowingly recorded have some objections to—and could also come with big legal consequences.

What happened: You can probably assume you’re on the record everywhere now—work meetings, happy hours, and even first dates—per a viral Wall Street Journal report last week. A growing number of people are capturing every social interaction using AI notetaking apps, slim mics that attach to phones, or wearables like smart glasses, pins, rings, bracelets, you name it.

For these self-appointed stenographers, the payoff is that they never miss a beat: The AI can summarize every convo and even spit out a to-do list. For everyone else, it’s a privacy nightmare, as many of these recording enthusiasts don’t appear to be asking for permission. And there’s a decent chance that they could be running afoul of the law.

The fine print: Most states, including New York, only require one-party consent to record convos—you can tape one you’re part of without the other people’s say-so. But Silicon Valley-ites are in an all-party consent state (of which there are 11), where everyone involved has to explicitly agree to being recorded—not that that’s stopped people.

There are consequences to having an AI bot in every meeting, Tech Brew reports.—WK

      

Sponsored By Carbon Arc

How ’bout them data sets? Finance teams don’t need an outsized budget for data, thanks to the Carbon Arc platform. It provides access to the same data that institutional investors use—credit card spend, foot traffic, app downloads—with no massive contract required. Start using it to stress-test your forecasts and validate your assumptions. Use code BREW30 for one month free.

market forces

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top finance reads.

Stat: Nearly $600 million. That’s how much 1,500 of the largest public companies distributed in executive perks in their most recent annual filings. (Mark Zuckerberg’s security cost Meta $22.5 million, in case you’re wondering.) 😮 (the Wall Street Journal)

Quote: “The 301s allow a permanent tariff without going to Congress to settle the dispute. That’s what all of this is about. The president doesn’t want to knock on the front door of Congress, so he’s trying every side door and every unlatched window to get in.”—Barry Appleton, co-director of New York Law School’s Center for International Law, on the latest round of tariffs (the Associated Press)

Read: The owner of this $400 million boating company is using a purpose trust to leave all future profits to charity. (the New York Times)

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John M Lund Photography Inc/Getty Images

Today’s interim CFOs are being hired to tackle acquisitions, fundraising, transformations, and other pivotal business moments. Learn how firms like global talent consultancy ZRG are placing temporary, or interim, CFOs more often.