Good morning. Karim Sadik-Khan is the new finance chief of Liquid Death, the company announced on Tuesday. Founded in 2017 and now valued at $1.4 billion, the beverage brand known for its edgy aluminum cans that aren’t filled with alcohol—instead, it’s water, sparkling water, or iced tea with fruit juice—last year hit $263 million in retail-scanned sales through registers and expanded to 113,000 locations across the U.S. and U.K.
Sadik-Khan, most recently CFO for spirits provider Beam Suntory North America, where he worked on Jim Beam’s IPO in 2011 and the acquisition of Jim Beam by Suntory in 2014, said what drew him to Liquid Death was the way it resonated with customers. “It’s a new brand-building model, and that’s what really pulled me in,” Sadik-Khan told me on Tuesday.
Liquid Death CEO and founder Mike Cessario, a former marketing professional, goes big when it comes to ad campaigns. For example, this summer, consumers who purchase Liquid Death have the chance to win a $400,000 two-seater, retired fighter jet. The pilot is not included. (In the 1990s, Pepsi attempted a contest to give away a jet, but didn’t come through, which was documented in the Netflix series Pepsi, Where’s My Jet?)
Finance, historically, has viewed marketing as a cost center, but Sadik-Khan shared with me his personal philosophy on the matter: “My view is that a bad CFO just says ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ And it’s very easy to say ‘no’—that doesn’t add value.”
He added that he’s found the most success in his career through building teams and removing barriers to execution. Working with partners, from CEOs to sales and marketing, as CFO, it’s crucial to understand everyone’s objectives and try to find the answer that “wins for all parties, that makes sense, is efficient, affordable, and also reduces risk,” Sadik-Khan said. “What I like about Mike is I think he has a really strong sense of that.”
You can read more of my conversation with Sadik-Khan and why the company is winning big with Gen Z here.
Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com
Leaderboard
Edmund Reese was named EVP and CFO at Aon plc (NYSE: AON), a global professional services firm, effective July 29. Reese will join Aon on July 1 to succeed Christa Davies, who will become a senior advisor to the firm until her previously announced retirement. Reese has more than 25 years of leadership experience at large public companies. He has served since 2020 as CFO of the global fintech, Broadridge Financial Solutions. Reese joined Broadridge from American Express, where he last served as SVP and CFO of its largest business unit, the global consumer services group, and held several financial leadership positions, including head of investor relations and CFO of global business services. Reese also previously served as CFO of the U.S. advisory group at Merrill Lynch and CFO of the corporate client group and stock plan services at Citigroup Smith Barney.
Antonio “Tony” Rodriquez was appointed interim CFO at Cerence Inc. (Nasdaq: CRNC), an AI company, effective June 4. Rodriquez brings over 25 years of experience. As Cerence’s interim CFO, he will lead the company’s finance organization, including accounting, tax, FP&A, treasury, facilities, and procurement. Rodriquez has served as a partner of CSuite Financial Partners, a financial executive services firm, since 2018, where he served as CFO of The Bouqs Company. Previously, he served as CFO of TouchCommerce Inc. Cerence will continue its search for a permanent CFO.
Big Deal
In the first quarter of 2024, cash positions fell for U.S. companies rated by S&P Global Ratings. A new report based on S&P Global Market Intelligence data finds the median investment-grade-rated company reported cash and equivalents falling to 21.48% of total liabilities, from 22.6% in the previous quarter. “This median cash ratio is a closely watched measure of liquidity and represents a company's ability to pay its short-term debt using cash and cash equivalents,” according to the report.
Going deeper
How Optimal Deposit Insurance Can Help Prevent Bank Runs, a new report in Wharton's business journal, discusses a paper co-authored by Wharton’s Itay Goldstein, which provides a framework to measure the welfare impact of changes in deposit insurance coverage limits, and the costs it will entail.
Overheard
“I have worked for a trillion-dollar company before, at Google. It takes a lot of hard work, I think it was close to 15-18 years before Google became a trillion-dollar company. These are just very long journeys.”
Sridhar Ramaswamy, CEO of Snowflake, told Fortune in an interview. Since Ramaswamy, a former Google senior executive, took the reins as chief executive three months ago, the decade-old company long known as the “Data Cloud” now bills itself as the “AI Data Cloud.”
