CFO CAREERS

Aziz Megji

Aziz Megji, chief financial officer at work management platform Asana for nearly two years now, had a path to the CFO office that could best be described as serpentine.

He began his career as an investment banking analyst at Bear Stearns right before the global financial crisis, made a brief stop in private equity, and then in 2014, switched to corporate development roles at Hewlett Packard Enterprise and then Nvidia. Then he decided he wanted on the CFO track.

Eventually he “linked up with a former colleague,” Sonalee Parekh, CFO at RingCentral, to lead strategic finance, treasury, and IR. When Parekh moved over to Asana, Megji joined her and stepped into the CFO role after Parekh left for a new opportunity.

While Megji had the capital markets experience many companies now look for, before jumping into corporate finance he reached out to his network to find out what experience he lacked. He spoke with CFO Brew about what he thinks is the most important part of being a finance chief.

You’ve had some very different positions on Wall Street and in corporate America. You started out in investment banking.

There were two parts of my career, which is kind of more M&A and strategy heavy, where it took me from banking to HPE, where I helped drive their transformation, and then Nvidia, which I came on board pre-pandemic…I was brought on to help lead the Arm acquisition. As we were completing it, [Nvidia] was taking off like wildfire and really bursting on the scene around data centers and AI, and the government started taking notice. [Regulatory challenges caused Nvidia to call off the Arm deal in February 2022.]

Megji is “super comfortable” with his decision to leave Nvidia for corporate finance.—LB

      

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M&A

Melissa Howatson

At the end of July, Microsoft-native AI ERP platform Vena Solutions announced it would acquire agentic data startup Morpheo AI—like Vena, a Toronto-based company. Vena CFO Melissa Howatson said that what first began as a partnership turned into “a great opportunity for us to bring [Morpheo AI] in-house” to strengthen its own internal AI engine capabilities.

Build option? Why buy? For Vena, the acquisition “was about the time it was going to save us and how much it was going to advance our product roadmap…with what they’ve already built.”

“Could we build it? Yes; it would take time, and it would take some additional talent. And [Morpheo] had both. They already know the space, and they have great, deep data expertise rooted in financial services,” Howatson told CFO Brew.

Why care about their expertise in financial services? “Financial services was an ideal proving ground because it combines enormous data complexity with virtually no tolerance for error,” Howatson added over email. “The team had to build technology capable of working across large, fragmented data environments while meeting an extremely high bar for accuracy. This was largely because in finance, even a decimal-point error in something like a variance can make the answer unusable.”

Vena got underneath the hood to examine its acquisition target’s code.—DL

      

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THE MARKET

Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Photos: Adobe Stock

If you’re torn about how to navigate markets these days, you’re not alone: Even Wall Street pros are divided about what happens next.

The bulls. Analysts at JPMorgan Chase’s trading desk see the glass as half full. The group, led by Global Head of Market Intelligence Andrew Tyler, just shifted their market outlook from tactically neutral to outright bullish, raising the end-of-year target for the S&P 500 from 7,800 to 8,000.

“We now see a more favorable setup for markets as bond yields find a level and oil prices are likely to trend lower, albeit in a choppy fashion,” Tyler wrote. It’s worth listening to him: Tyler & Co. turned cautious back in June just ahead of a volatile summer for markets, accurately forecasting a sell-off in AI stocks.

Here’s why JPMorgan’s feeling optimistic:

• In the near term, catalysts like the jobs report on Friday, plus the next CPI report and Fed decision in October, could juice stocks heading into the final quarter of the year.
• Looking ahead, strong earnings growth combined with lower macroeconomic volatility will boost markets across the board.
• As for specifics, Tyler says the AI trade has regained momentum and he loves owning tech, particularly semiconductor stocks. He also likes banks, which will profit from a steeper yield curve.

But Morgan Stanley’s CIO says a market correction could be near, Brew Markets reports.—MR

      

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market forces

Francis Scialabba

MARKET FORCES

Today’s top finance reads.

Stat: $42 billion. That was Anthropic’s net loss in 2025, according to its IPO prospectus. (Reuters)

Quote: “For a lot of these goods, the 50% was already acting as a de facto ban by making importation from Canada into the United States uneconomical.”—Trade attorney Patrick Childress, on why the ban on Canadian alcohol, dairy, motorcycles, and other goods may be mainly symbolic (AP)

Read: How a hawk named El Charro became Ford’s employee of the month. 🪶 (Wall Street Journal)

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