GM CFO’s exit latest in Detroit vs. Silicon Valley tug-of-war for talent

DETROIT — The Detroit 3 have been working to fend off challenges from tech companies that want to disrupt the auto industry, and General Motors CFO Dhivya Suryadevara's sudden departure shows that automakers have to compete with Silicon Valley for executives as well as for customers.

But Suryadevara's move to Stripe, an online payment processor that has become one of the world's most valuable startups, also validates the auto industry's growing bench of coveted talent.

"What you're seeing is talent being developed and then being sought after. That's kind of a good problem to have. Maybe now after her doing well there, it will be easier to recruit," said Mike Ramsey, an analyst at Gartner. "It's a recognition that there is talent [in Detroit] instead of it being the other way around."

Suryadevara, 41, played key roles in GM's sell-off of Opel, purchase of Cruise Automation and 2018 restructuring plan. Another top GM executive, Alicia Boler Davis, who was head of global manufacturing operations, left the company last year to become vice president of global customer fulfillment at Amazon.

Meanwhile, Ford Motor Co. last year hired Amazon veteran Tim Stone as its CFO, showing that the talent pipeline between Detroit and the West Coast can flow the opposite direction, too.

GM's board and senior management will conduct an extensive internal and external search for a new CFO, said Steve Carlisle, president of GM North America. "We're confident that we'll find an exceptionally strong candidate. We won't miss a beat," he said.

Whether GM will promote from within or hire from outside the company is a toss-up, said David Whiston, an analyst with Morningstar. Given its diverse board of directors, Whiston wouldn't be surprised if GM tapped an outsider. But Suryadevara's success proved that GM can elevate talent from within, Ramsey said.

Carlisle last week said GM has confidence in acting CFO John Stapleton. Stapleton, 52, who had been GM's North American CFO since January 2014, has held a series of finance roles since joining GM in 1990.

"He's been a significant contributor to the great execution and the profit picture in North America," Carlisle said.

Before becoming GM's first female CFO nearly two years ago, Suryadevara held various roles in GM's finance office and at GM Asset Management in New York since 2004. Suryadevara, who grew up in India and moved to the U.S. at age 22 to attend Harvard Business School, said in a LinkedIn post last week that leaving GM was a difficult decision.

"I am proud of what we accomplished together as a team during my time with GM," she wrote. "I will be cheering for the team from the sidelines and I have full confidence that this team will lead GM into the future."

Suryadevara gained respect among investors for providing direct, clear answers to their questions. As soon as she became CFO, she recognized that investors wanted to hear about cash flow and homed in on it.

"It's refreshing when you get someone who will basically tell you what is actually happening, rather than making you connect the dots between a bunch of different things," Ramsey said.

"If you tell the truth and point out the flaws, [investors] are more likely to believe your good stuff, too. That's probably one of the benefits she had."

GM began a wide-ranging restructuring plan just two months after Suryadevara was named CFO. It included eliminating 15 percent of GM's North American salaried jobs and ending production at five North American plants to cut $6 billion in costs.

A month into the coronavirus pandemic, Suryadevara provided a detailed scenario for the second half of 2020. She said in a 14-million-unit industry with no disruption to production, GM expected $7 billion to $9 billion in cash generation in the second half of the year, which would help repay debt and offset the cash burn in the first half of the year.

"That should be how all companies communicate," Whiston said.

Suryadevara is trading a job with a complex balance sheet to work for Stripe, an asset-light company that is rumored to go public soon.

"It's a good opportunity for her. It's just a real shame for GM," Whiston said.

Stripe is valued at $36 billion, almost matching GM's market cap of about $40 billion, despite having a fraction of the automaker's revenue. Stripe was founded in 2010 and counts Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Zillow, Expedia, Uber and Lyft among its customers.