Good morning. Niclas Neglén helped take Klarna public in September 2025. Now, after six years as CFO, he’s leaving—alongside David Sandström, the company’s chief marketing officer of nearly a decade—in a leadership transition. The changes were announced the same day Klarna tempered its full-year guidance and watched its stock fall about 22%. Both executives will transition out of their roles by early 2027.
Klarna, a Sweden-based buy-now-pay-later company, is a digital bank and payments provider with nearly 120 million global active users. Companies such as Apple, Nike, and Sephora offer Klarna as a payment option for their shoppers. It trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker KLAR. Klarna is backed by Sequoia Capital, which has invested in the company since 2010 and remains its largest institutional shareholder.
On Tuesday, the company reported second-quarter diluted earnings per share of $0.01, beating Wall Street’s expectations, while revenue increased 27% year over year to approximately $1.04 billion. Klarna also reported a surprise $9 million net profit. However, Klarna tempered expectations for full-year revenue and volume growth, cutting its full-year revenue outlook to $4.08 billion–$4.16 billion, citing weakness in German retail spending, its largest market in Europe.
Shares fell an additional 2.19% on Wednesday, closing the regular trading session at $14.73 per share.
“Transaction margin dollar guidance was raised for the full year but still fell short of our expectations,” Niklas Kammer, senior equity analyst at Morningstar, wrote in an analyst note on Wednesday. Visibility into Klarna’s volume growth trajectory has declined, resulting in a material 2-percentage-point-per-year reduction in our volume growth expectations, he wrote.
Neglén played a key role at Klarna, building the finance organization and taking the company public. He has been “a trusted partner to me and the board through six years of growth and change,” Sebastian Siemiatkowski, co-founder and CEO of Klarna, said in a statement. The company said it has begun a search for a New York-based CFO.
The CFO and CMO transitions were not the result of any disagreement with Klarna on matters related to the company’s operations, policies, or practices, the company said in a statement.
I asked Shawn Cole, president and founding partner of executive search firm Cowen Partners, for his assessment of the CFO change. “It’s a natural transition for any company,” Cole told me. Neglén’s tenure and accomplishments at Klarna are significant, he said. “What the company needed to go public may not be what it needs as a public company,” he added.
He continued: “I would also assume that having the CFO based in London created some strain, particularly now that Klarna is U.S.-listed. The fact that the company called out New York in the press release is of note. Foreign companies often use New York as a prestige and capital-markets signal because of its proximity to investors, analysts, and the exchanges.”
The CFO mandate now shifts toward a more strategic, external-facing finance leader with deep U.S. public company experience, capital markets expertise, credit and balance-sheet sophistication, and experience in banking and regulated financial markets, Cole said. “That is not a difficult profile to find in New York,” he said.
Klarna’s new CFO will need to be a pro at navigating Wall Street.
Sheryl Estrada
Sheryl.Estrada@fortune.com
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Fortune 500 Power Moves
John Rogers was appointed EVP and CFO of Baxter International Inc. (No. 382), a global medtech company, effective Oct. 1. Rogers joins Baxter from Smith+Nephew plc, a portfolio medical technology business, where he has served as CFO since 2024 after beginning with the company as CFO-designate in 2023. Before Smith+Nephew, he served as CFO of WPP plc, a creative services company. Rogers previously held leadership roles with J Sainsbury plc, a food, general merchandise and clothing retailer, including as CEO of Sainsbury’s Argos, and as CFO of Sainsbury’s.
The weekly Fortune 500 Power Moves column tracks Fortune 500 company C-suite shifts—see the most recent edition.
More notable moves
Mark Chiplock has resigned as CFO of Ameresco, Inc. (NYSE: AMRC), an energy infrastructure company, effective Sept. 25. Chiplock has accepted a CFO position at a private equity-owned company in a different industry. A search has begun to identify the next CFO who will help lead the company during its transformation period of growth, Baxter said in the announcement.
Tom Speir was appointed EVP and CFO of United Community (NYSE: UCB). Speir will join the bank on Sept. 8, succeeding Jefferson Harralson, who announced his retirement earlier this year. Speir brings to the role more than two decades of financial experience, including balance sheet management, M&A, strategic planning, and investor relations.
Big Deal
Russell Reynolds Associates (RRA) recently released its H1 2026 Global CFO Turnover Index, finding that 11% of companies across leading global public indices appointed a new CFO in the first half of 2026, up from 10% a year earlier—the highest H1 appointment rate in the index's eight-year history. That's 192 appointments. Among S&P 500 companies, the rate reached 13%, versus an eight-year H1 average of 10%.
First-time CFOs accounted for 64% of global appointments, up from 60% a year earlier. RRA attributes part of the shift to a rising share of retirement-driven departures, which may be shrinking the pool of experienced, active CFOs available to hire.
Still, companies favor proven operators in certain conditions: technology recorded the highest share of experienced hires among tracked industries, at 56%.
Going deeper
"Amazon isn’t giving up on Jeff Bezos’ drone deliveries dream—and after 13 years of turbulence, the momentum is finally shifting" is a Fortune article by Sebastian Herrera.
Herrera writes: “Thirteen years ago, Jeff Bezos strode into a room on the set of CBS’ 60 Minutes and revealed Amazon’s first delivery drone, predicting 30-minute drop-offs of airborne packages within the next four to five years. Ever since, the e-commerce giant has struggled to live up to that promise. On Wednesday, it took a step forward, announcing plans to expand drone delivery to nearly 500 U.S. cities and towns by the end of this year.” Read more here.
Overheard
"The 'AI Shuffle' is the corporate habit of exchanging one technology logo for another while preserving every underlying assumption about how work gets done. It feels like progress because it generates activity. It does not produce an advantage."
—Stephen Messer, co-founder of Collective[i], writes in a Fortune opinion piece.