Three sitting S&P 500 CFOs served as interim CEOs

Equilar data: all three finance chiefs returned to their prior roles

Three sitting CFOs at S&P 500 companies — Intel’s David Zinsner, Lululemon’s Meghan Frank and PayPal’s Jamie Miller — have served as interim CEOs at their current companies, according to Equilar, a data provider. All three returned to their prior roles after a successor was hired.

Peter Crist, chairman of executive-recruitment firm Crist Kolder Associates, said many public companies with no immediate successor “would view the CFO as an automatic interim, particularly in a crisis situation,” and pointed to finance chiefs’ knowledge of investors.

The pattern reached Nvidia on Thursday. Colette Kress took the reins as interim chief executive, following the resignation of Jensen Huang after revelations of two extramarital affairs, including one with a suspected Chinese spy, the Journal reported. Kress, the AI chip company’s finance chief, will continue to serve as CFO while its board searches for a new chief executive. Nvidia’s board has begun searching for a new CEO.

Kress joined Nvidia in 2013 after holding senior finance roles at Cisco, Microsoft and Texas Instruments. During her tenure, she has overseen an expansion of the company’s balance sheet.

At Intel, Zinsner took on the additional role of co-CEO in December 2024 alongside client-computing executive Michelle Johnston Holthaus, following the abrupt resignation of former CEO Pat Gelsinger. Intel in March 2025 named Lip-Bu Tan as chief executive. Zinsner and Holthaus, who has since left the company, relinquished their interim titles after Tan came on board.

Lululemon’s Frank added the title of interim co-CEO in January, serving alongside president and chief commercial officer André Maestrini, after then-CEO Calvin McDonald resigned under pressure from investors after sales faltered. The athleticwear maker’s new CEO, Heidi O’Neill, took over in September, and Frank and Maestrini shed the interim CEO titles.

PayPal’s Miller took on the interim CEO title for a month in February, after the company’s board replaced then-CEO Alex Chriss with former HP CEO Enrique Lores, citing the company’s unsatisfactory pace of change. Miller, who also serves as chief operating officer, held the interim CEO title for a transitional period until Lores started his role.

In a 2016 interview with the Journal, Kress offered finance chiefs advice on pace: “The best thing I could tell any type of CFO coming in: Be careful how much time you spend thinking about the trends that you’ve seen in the past and have a good understanding of how quickly things could move going forward.” Kress said she was drawn to Nvidia because of Huang, whom she described as a visionary, and a culture she described as “essentially ego-less.”

Also in the Journal’s reporting: the Federal Reserve doesn’t plan to make a decision on interest rates when its rate-setting committee convenes in October of next year, according to a tentative schedule released Thursday. The central bank’s proposed schedule calls for eight meetings of the Federal Open Market Committee in 2027, as is typical, but notes that the meeting slated for late October will not include a policy decision. Since taking the helm last summer, Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh has been floating the idea of having fewer meetings, which would mark a significant shift in the central bank’s operations.

On the economic calendar, the BLS releases the producer-price index for October.

Separately, Klarna Group, the London-based digital banking payments company, named Chris Koegel as CFO, effective Jan. 1. Koegel was most recently head of corporate finance and investor relations at Robinhood Markets. He succeeds Niclas Neglén, who will remain as CFO until the end of the year.