Finance

Salesforce Taps Robin Washington to Lead Finance and Operations

On Wednesday, Salesforce announced that Robin Washington, the former finance chief of Gilead Sciences, will join the company as its new president and chief financial and operating officer. Washington, who will start in March, is replacing current finance chief Amy Weaver and operating chief Brian Millham, both of whom are set to retire in May.

In August, Salesforce had revealed that Weaver would step down once a successor was named. Under her leadership, the company increased its adjusted operating margin ahead of schedule after activist investors took an interest in the stock.

Salesforce's shares dropped nearly 2% in after-hours trading.

Washington, 62, has served as Salesforce’s lead independent director since 2022, after joining the board in 2013. She retired from Gilead in 2019 and later became a director at Alphabet. Washington will continue to serve on Salesforce’s board, with Arnold Donald, former CEO of Carnival and a Salesforce board member since 2023, stepping into the role of lead independent director, according to the statement.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff praised Washington’s leadership on social media, calling her a “visionary leader” with a wealth of experience, including as former CFO of Gilead and Hyperion, and a longtime Salesforce board member. Benioff highlighted that her expertise would help guide the company into the "Agentforce era," referencing Salesforce’s new Agentforce add-on software designed to automate sales and customer service processes within businesses.

Earlier in her career, Washington held leadership roles in finance at enterprise software company Hyperion, was a vice president at PeopleSoft, and worked as an auditor at Deloitte. Both Hyperion and PeopleSoft were acquired by Oracle, where Benioff worked before founding Salesforce in 1999.

Millham, who joined Salesforce as president of commercial sales shortly after its founding, was promoted to president and operating chief in August 2022. After co-CEO Bret Taylor left in early 2023, Millham also took on some of Taylor’s responsibilities.

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TECH

Top High-Growth Tech Stocks to Watch: BeijingABT Networks and More

In recent weeks, global markets have faced significant volatility, with tech stocks under pressure due to competitive challenges in the AI sector and mixed earnings reports from companies. In this environment, identifying high-growth tech stocks requires careful evaluation of factors such as innovation potential and their ability to weather market fluctuations.

Top 10 High-Growth Tech Companies
Here are some of the top high-growth tech companies based on their revenue and earnings growth:

• Clinuvel Pharmaceuticals: 21.39% revenue growth, 26.17% earnings growth, Growth Rating: ★★★★★★

• eWeLL Ltd: 26.41% revenue growth, 28.82% earnings growth, Growth Rating: ★★★★★★

• Ascelia Pharma: 76.15% revenue growth, 47.16% earnings growth, Growth Rating: ★★★★★★

• Medley: 20.95% revenue growth, 27.32% earnings growth, Growth Rating: ★★★★★★

• Pharma Mar: 23.24% revenue growth, 44.74% earnings growth, Growth Rating: ★★★★★★

• Mental Health Technologies Ltd: 25.83% revenue growth, 113.12% earnings growth, Growth Rating: ★★★★★★

• TG Therapeutics: 29.48% revenue growth, 43.58% earnings growth, Growth Rating: ★★★★★★

• Alkami Technology: 21.99% revenue growth, 102.65% earnings growth, Growth Rating: ★★★★★★

• Elliptic Laboratories: 61.01% revenue growth, 121.13% earnings growth, Growth Rating: ★★★★★★

• Initiator Pharma: 73.95% revenue growth, 31.67% earnings growth, Growth Rating: ★★★★★★

Click here to explore the full list of 1,233 stocks from our High Growth Tech and AI Stocks screener.

Here, we spotlight a selection of preferred stocks from the screener.

BeijingABT Networks Ltd
Simply Wall St Growth Rating: ★★★★★☆

Overview: BeijingABT Networks Co., Ltd. specializes in visualized network security technology solutions in China, with a market cap of CN¥3.28 billion.

Operations: The company primarily generates revenue from its network security segment, which contributed CN¥570.29 million.

CRYPTO

Banks Aim to Disrupt Bitcoin’s Rise, But Trump May Pave the Way

When crypto markets last collapsed, regulators were quick to celebrate that the country’s largest banks had minimal exposure to Bitcoin and other digital assets, leaving them largely unaffected. The next time, however, could be different.

After years of resistance from the Biden administration, banks may soon receive the green light from President Donald Trump and his top officials to begin offering cryptocurrency services. Trump, who has launched his own token, is establishing a pro-crypto government, and banks previously excluded from the industry are now set to join, competing with companies like Coinbase Global, Robinhood Markets, and BlackRock for a share of the crypto market.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) is planning to revise banking guidelines for cryptocurrency, which would allow banks to engage in certain crypto activities without needing prior regulatory approval. Some banks have already met with government officials to advocate for offering crypto asset custody and "tokenized deposits," which could integrate checking accounts into blockchains, according to a source familiar with the discussions.

“If the rules come in and make it a legitimate business, you’ll see the banking system aggressively enter the transactional side of it,” Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan stated in a CNBC interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, describing crypto as “just another form of payment.”

While banks aren’t entirely excluded from the crypto space, allowing them to offer a broader range of services, including blockchain-based deposits, would mark a dramatic shift from the stance of the Biden administration, which discouraged banking involvement with crypto. It would also represent a reversal for independent regulators, who have long expressed concerns over crypto’s potential for illicit use and its risks to financial stability.

Major banking regulators—including the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the FDIC—raised warnings in 2023 about the "significant safety and soundness concerns" crypto poses to banks. They required banks to seek approval before launching major crypto initiatives. However, for certain activities, that policy may soon change.