Inside the strangest CFO saga in the Fortune 500 (2024)

When he was given the vaunted title, Tyson was 32, making him the youngest CFO in the Fortune 500 at the time. But unlike a handful of other 30-something finance leaders at big public companies, Tyson had little formal business experience on his résumé. He was slotted into a CFO role that many consider to be second-in-command at the nearly 90-year-old company, where his father John H. Tyson has been chairman since 1998.

To be fair, John Randal Tyson had the right education for the job—he has an MBA from Stanford and an undergraduate degree in economics from Harvard University—and sources who spoke to me for a recent feature about the family say he is intelligent, competent, and well-liked. But when he became CFO, his career had included an unknown number of years when he worked in investment banking as a private equity and venture capital investor for JPMorgan Chase, between his school stints, and three years in the chief sustainability officer job at Tyson Foods. (He was one year out of Stanford when, in 2019, he got that C-suite title, which he also kept after becoming CFO.)

Tyson may have grown into the job in time—and he still could. Nepo babies in business often benefit from years of watching a parent manage relationships and leadership challenges. However, Tyson has had an unusual tenure thus far. In mid-June, he was suspended following a DWI charge. That arrest followed a more baffling incident that happened in 2022, just six weeks after Tyson’s CFO appointment, when he was found asleep in a stranger’s bed in Fayetteville, Ark., the town next to Springdale, Ark., where Tyson Foods is headquartered.

In that case, a college-aged woman returned home in the wee hours of a Sunday morning to find the young billionaire’s scion under her duvet. Police bodycam footage from the incident later made celebrity gossip site TMZ , which called it a “wild arrest video.” In it, a disoriented Tyson in orange boxer shorts struggles to get back to sleep as officers try to coax him up.

Tyson was charged with trespassing and public intoxication, for which he eventually pleaded guilty and paid $440 in fines. (The house was a short walk from Fayetteville’s Dickson Street, its main bar district.) On his debut earnings call that fall, the young CFO apologized for his behavior and said it wouldn’t happen again. But the DWI arrest, for which he recently pleaded not guilty, wrecked his nearly two-year arrest-free streak. (In his college years, Tyson had also faced charges in Illinois for using a fake ID and possessing alcohol as a minor, according to public records.)

“[I]f I get in trouble tonight, my life will be ruined,” Tyson told the officer who made the recent traffic stop. The company suspended him later that day; Curt Calaway, a finance executive with 18 years at the Tyson, was named interim CFO. (He joined a positive earnings call this week.) The company still hasn’t revealed whether the young Tyson will be returning to the role. If he is brought back, the company will have to contend with the message that would send to other employees, both in the C-suite, at the corporate office, and in Tyson’s dozens of plants.

So what happens next?

Should you know anything about the Tyson family history, you might be inclined to believe that Tyson will return to the family multinational in some capacity at a future date, if not as CFO. As my story explains, Tyson’s father Johnny Tyson had issues with alcohol and, in his case, drugs, when he was a young adult and even after he started working at Tyson Foods, according to an interview he gave to the New York Times. (“I have friends who snorted co*ke with him next to a copy of Winning Through Intimidation,” a Fayetteville resident who had ties to the Tyson family told me.) And Johnny Tyson’s father, Don Tyson, who is credited with building the company into a meat giant in the U.S. and died in 2011, was also infamous for his luxurious tastes and indulgences.

In short, this is a strange, even screenplay-worthy saga, set at a time when billionaire family dynasties can’t always play by their own rules. For CFOs who spent years climbing the corporate ladder, it might also evoke a touch of schadenfreude.

Read my full story here.

Lila MacLellan
Lila.MacLellan@fortune.com

The following sections of CFO Daily were curated by Greg McKenna.

Leaderboard

Francesca Weissman was promoted to CFO of Edgewell Personal Care (NYSE: EPC), which manufactures shave, sun, skin and feminine products, effective Dec. 1. She will succeed Dan Sullivan, who has been appointed chief operating officer and will continue to serve as CFO until Weissman assumes the role. Weissman joined Edgewell in 2019 and has held several senior finance positions, including serving as CFO of Party City from 2017–19.

Jeff Gonzales was promoted to CFO of Ares Commercial Real Estate Corporation (NYSE: ACRE), effective Aug. 30. He will succeed Tae-Sik Yoon, who has been appointed chief operating officer after serving 12 years as CFO. Gonzales joined Ares in 2013 and currently serves as a managing director and controller.

Big Deal

U.S. retailers lose billions each year due to poor consumer experiences on digital payment platforms, according to a survey of over 6,700 software developers, quality assurance professionals and independent consumers. The survey—conducted by Applause, a quality assurance company for digital brands—found that 76% of customers are likely to abandon a transaction if a preferred method of payment is not accepted.

Forty-one percent of consumers have recently had issues making an online payment. Customers abandoning their online carts contributes to an estimated $111 billion to $136 billion in lost revenue for U.S. retailers, according to data from Retail TouchPoints cited in the report.

“Choice and speed are top of mind for consumers,” Luke Damian, Applause’s chief growth officer, said in a statement. “If they can’t quickly make a purchase with their preferred payment method, they’re not going to continue on with the experience.”

Going deeper

Create Authentic Connections with Virtual Team Members, is a new report from the business journal of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Researchers from the Wharton Neuroscience Initiative adapted its “fast friends” exercise—initially developed to foster in-person connection—for use with remote teams. Then, they tested the program with an Argentinian e-commerce company, aiming to bridge the gap between rural artisans and distribution managers.

Overheard

“The shrill rhetoric against China has created a situation where there is an incongruence between political messaging and economic requirements, and this contradiction is placing New Delhi under stress. Eventually, India cannot do without close economic ties with Beijing.”

—Sushant Singh, lecturer in South Asian studies at Yale University, told the Financial Times in an interview about how India’s tough line on China could hinder its ambition of becoming a manufacturing powerhouse.