volatility
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Yes, Taylor Swift’s engagement is making ripples in the stock market – here’s what it means for you
In a decade already defined by wide-ranging macroeconomic shocks, IR teams may be forgiven for ignoring the news that pop princess Taylor Swift has announced her engagement to Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. After all, this sort of thing usually doesn’t have much more impact than the celebrity sections of news sites and the social media ecosystem. However, this is Taylor Swift we’re talking about: arch-capitalist, savvy marketeer and industry-defining brand, whose net worth is estimated to be $1.6 bn (that’s enough to make her a small-cap company, in market terms). So naturally, when she makes such a…
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The CFO: ‘You need to have a stomach of iron during times of volatility,’ says Block’s Amrita Ahuja
Many IROs hope that their time in the profession might set them up well for a C-suite position well one day. But for Amrita Ahuja, CFO and COO for payments company Block, the transition happened directly during her time as head of IR for interactive entertainment firm Activision Blizzard, where she was called upon to become finance chief of its video-game publishing wing Blizzard Entertainment in 2018. Fast forward a few years and she now holds the dual posts of CFO and – for the past two years – COO at Block, the financial technology company founded by Jack Dorsey,…
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How to talk tariffs: IR in the new era of uncertainty
The US economy is in ‘a period of transition,’ US President Donald Trump told Fox News on Sunday. By close of trading on Monday, the US S&P 500 had dropped almost 3 percent, with tech stocks taking a particularly heavy hit. Weeks of back and forth as Trump threatened tariffs, paused tariffs, reintroduced tariffs – and saw retaliatory levies by affected markets – finally came to a head.
