(Reuters) – Home-renting company Airbnb Inc on Monday hired Amazon.com Inc <AMZN.O> veteran Dave Stephenson as chief financial officer (CFO), ahead of a widely anticipated initial public offering next year.
Stephenson’s departure was followed by the exit of another Amazon veteran, Jason Warnick, who is leaving the e-commerce giant to become CFO at online brokerage startup Robinhood.
Stephenson will start in early January, Airbnb said in a statement, and will replace Laurence Tosi, who left the company in February.
Stephenson, a who has worked at Amazon for 17 years, was most recently vice president and CFO of the online retailer’s worldwide consumer organization, which is responsible for all of Amazon’s global website sales including its Prime service.
Airbnb, valued by private investors at $31 billion, has in recent months turned to new services and offerings to fuel growth, adding luxury vacation homes and hotels to its platform.
Robinhood said Warnick will join the company next week, after spending nearly 20 years at Amazon – most recently vice president of finance and chief of staff to the CFO.
Robinhood, valued at $5.6 billion after its latest round of funding, competes with established brokerages such as TD Ameritrade and E* Trade Financial Corp <ETFC.O> that charge clients for commissions.
Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours.
(Reporting by Arjun Panchadar, Aishwarya Venugopal and Shariq Khan in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva and Gopakumar Warrier)
