Sysco removes interim tag from CFO

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Sysco, the food distributor, has named Brandon Sewell as executive vice president and chief financial officer, effective Nov. 1. He had been interim CFO since March.

Sysco sells and distributes food and related products to restaurants, hospitals, schools, hotels and similar customers. It runs 333 distribution centers in 10 countries with 75,000 employees, and had sales of more than $84 billion in fiscal 2026. Its head office is in the Energy Corridor in West Houston.  The market cap of the company is about $40 billion.

In March, the company agreed to acquire Jetro Restaurant Depot, a cash-and-carry food wholesaler, for $29.1 billion. Jetro has revenues of $16 billion. The deal is expected to close in early 2027.

Mr. Sewell, 46, joined Sysco in 2014. Before taking the interim job, he was CFO of Sysco’s U.S. business, its largest segment. Earlier, he ran the company’s global financial planning and analysis group and held finance roles in supply chain and merchandising. Mr. Sewell has an undergraduate degree from Brigham Young University and an MBA from Duke.

He replaces Kenny Cheung, who resigned in February to become the CFO at McKesson.

Mr. Sewell’s base salary rises to $775,000 from his interim salary of $420,000. His target bonus is 125% of salary, and his target annual long-term incentive award is 350% of salary. He also gets a one-time $500,000 restricted stock award for completing the interim role, plus a one-time $1 million supplemental award of performance and restricted stock units for fiscal 2027.

SEC filing 8-K – Sysco removes interim tag from CFO

Renewables company appoints new CFO as it closes merger

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XCF Global, Inc. (Nasdaq: SAFX) has appointed board member Wray T. Thorn, 55, as CFO, effective October 19, 2026.

The company is based in the Galleria area of Houston and produces sustainable aviation fuel.  On October 16 it completed an all-stock business combination with Southern Energy Renewables (which produces fuels from biomass) and DevvStream (which sells environmental credits). The shareholders of Southern Energy got 20% and DevvStream shareholders got 10% of the combined business. On October 20, the company entered into an agreement to buy an aviation fuel production facility located near Los Angeles for $60 million.

Current CFO Harvey Schnitzer, who has been in the role for six months, will become Director of Integration.

Mr. Schnitzer is employed through an interim CFO consultancy company. He had replaced William Dale, another interim CFO from the same company. In turn, Mr. Dale had replaced Simon Oxley (former CFO at Tellurian) as CFO in January.

XCF was taken public by a SPAC in June 2025. At the time the deal closed, the stock price was $10. It is now 16 cents.

New CFO

Mr. Thorn has been a director since XCF merged with the SPAC, Focus Impact BH3 Acquisition Company, in June 2025, and he chairs the board’s finance committee. He co-founded Focus Impact Partners in 2021 and founded Clear Heights Capital. From 2012 to 2021 he was chief investment officer for private investments at Two Sigma Investments, where he built businesses that grew to about $4 billion in assets. Before that he was at Marathon Asset Management, Fox Paine and Dubilier & Co. He started his career at Chemical Bank.

Mr. Thorn will receive a base salary of $750,000. XCF was paying Focus Impact Partners a $1.5 million annual consulting fee. That agreement was ended on October 19 with a $456,164 settlement.

Ownership

Majique Ladnier owned a 36% stake in pre-merger XCF, all of Southern Energy and also had a stake in DevvStream. Post-merger she controls about 45% of the combined company.

Ms. Ladnier’s husband is Suneet Singal. In 2021, he settled SEC fraud charges over two public companies without admitting or denying them. He agreed to a $3.2 million penalty and a 10-year ban from serving as an officer or director of a public company. He and the other defendants also paid $3.2 million in disgorgement plus interest.

In June 2025, Mr. Singal was convicted by a Sacramento jury on 8 counts of mail and wire fraud in a separate case involving payments made to fast food franchises that he said he owned but allegedly did not. Mr. Singal is seeking a retrial because he alleges the court prejudiced his defense. The court has not yet ruled on this.

It should be noted that Ms. Ladnier was neither a defendant in the SEC case, nor the case in Sacramento.

SEC filing 8-K – XCF appoints new CFO

 

Long serving CFO of Construction Contractor to retire

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Comfort Systems CFO Bill George will retire once the company files its 10-K for 2026.

Comfort has its head office in the Memorial City area of Houston. It installs heating, air conditioning and electrical systems in commercial, industrial and institutional buildings, with 211 locations in 155 cities.

Current revenues are $11 billion, up from $5.0 billion in 2023, and net income was $1.4 billion. As you can imagine, the company has benefited strongly from the boom in data center construction. In addition, the company has made seven acquisitions since the beginning of 2025. The market cap is about $49 billion.

Mr. George helped found the company in 1997 and has been CFO since May 2005.

Julie Shaeff, currently Chief Accounting Officer, will succeed him as executive vice president and CFO. She has also been in her role since May 2005. Before that she was vice president and corporate controller from 2002 to 2005 and assistant corporate controller from 1999 to 2002. Earlier she was financial accounting manager at Browning-Ferris Industries from 1996 to 1999 and worked at Arthur Andersen from 1987 to 1995. Ms. Shaeff is a CPA and holds a BBA in Accounting from Texas A&M.

The compensation committee has not yet set any pay changes for Ms. Shaeff.

SEC filing – 8-K Comfort Systems CFO to retire

 

Energy CEO moves to larger rival

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Danny Brown, CEO of Chord Energy, has resigned to take the same position at Expand Energy, effective October 26.

Mr. Brown has been the CEO of Chord for two years and CEO of Oasis Petroleum, Chord’s predecessor, for three years before that. He started his career at Kerr McGee and held various roles there and at Anadarko, which acquired Kerr McGee in 2006.



Chord, based in downtown Houston, has a market capitalization of $8.5 billion. Expand, formed from the merger of Chesapeake and Southwestern Energy in 2024, has a market capitalization of $22 billion. There’s no overlap between the two companies, with Chord having its operations in the Williston Basin (Montana & the Dakotas), while Expand is mostly in the Haynesville (Texas & Louisiana) and the Marcellus (Pennsylvania).

Earlier this year Expand announced it was moving its head office from Oklahoma City to Spring, TX. According to a recent report in the Wall Street Journal, Expand’s CEO Nick Dell’Osso was ousted, in part, due to his opposition to the relocation.

Mr. Brown will receive a base salary of $1 million per year. He also receives a grant of restricted stock units (“RSUs”) and performance share units (“PSUs”) with a combined target value of $15.6 million. These are to compensate Mr. Brown for the incentives he is giving up at Chord. The RSUs will vest over three years, the PSUs between 2028-2030, depending on performance.

Mr. Brown had a base salary of $850,000 at Chord.

Michael Lou has been appointed CEO at Chord to replace Mr. Brown. Since March 2024, he has served as Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Commercial Officer. Prior to that, he spent two years as CFO. Chord was formed from the merger of Oasis Petroleum and Whiting Petroleum in July 2022, though Mr. Lou actually joined Oasis in 2009 as Senior VP, Finance.

The company has not yet determined Mr. Lou’s new compensation arrangements.

SEC filing 8-K – Expand appoints new CEO

SEC filing 8-K – Chord announces new CEO

 

Houston SPAC to take electrode manufacturer public

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Pyrophyte Acquisition Corp II, a Houston-based SPAC, has agreed to take Sakuu Corporation public in a deal that values the latter at $600 million.

Sakuu is based in San Jose and has developed a process to manufacture electrodes using a dry printing process. The company claims this will make them cheaper and quicker to produce. They will be used in energy storage, which is a critical bottleneck in the development of AI data centers.



Traditionally, electrodes are manufactured using wet processes that involve coating, drying ovens and solvent recovery. Some companies such as Tesla have developed other types of dry processes but they involve spraying or using hazardous materials. Sakuu, formed in 2016, is targeting Q2 2027 for its first commercial systems.

Back in 2023, Sakuu announced a deal to go public via another SPAC, Plum Acquisition Corp I. That deal also valued Sakuu at $600 million. However, at that time, it planned to use its dry printing process to make solid-state batteries at scale. The company forecast it would have revenues of $236 million in 2025. The deal with that SPAC collapsed in June 2023.

Pyrophyte II raised $200 million through its IPO in May 2025. Its CEO is Bernard Duroc-Danner, the former long-time CEO of Weatherford.

Mr. Duroc-Danner is also the CEO of Pyrophyte Acquisition Corp. That SPAC went public in October 2021 when it raised $175 million in an IPO.

Pyrophyte I announced a $708 million deal in November 2023 to take Sio Silica public. That company was developing a silica sand project in Manitoba. The company never got approval to develop the mine and the deal stalled. Technically, the deal is not dead. However, most of the shareholders redeemed their stock. Pyrophyte I only has $18 million of cash left. Its shares were delisted in 2024.

Investor Presentation

Houston physician indicted in $30 million COVID-19 fraud scheme

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A west Houston physician has been indicted in a $30 million COVID-19 fraud scheme.

Dr. Joseph A. Montes, aged 66, owned two Houston clinics, Joseph A. Montes MD & Associates, P.A. and Montes Medical PLLC in the Spring Branch area of Houston.



The indictment says that from 2020 to 2022 he let an employee (not named in the indictment) run pop-up COVID-19 testing sites under his name. Patients, who were uninsured, got nasal swabs, but the sites billed the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) for office visits that never happened. On about 29 dates, the clinics filed more than 3,000 claims for office visits. On December 1, 2021, they filed more than 9,000, which works out to roughly one patient visit every nine seconds for 24 hours.

About $30 million was billed, and about $20 million was paid.  Montes and the co-conspirator agreed that Montes would receive 20% of the revenue from HRSA.

Interestingly a Google reviewer from 2021 for one of the clinics stated

‘This is a ponzi scheme , the doctor is not even a doctor, the COVID test is a scheme, they don’t use proper protection to not infect you with other COVID patients , the numbers they have listed don’t work. I think we should ALL call and report him to the medical board. (For the record, there are no complaints filed at the medical board and the doctor the reviewer was referring to was probably the employee)

Dr. Montes allegedly spent $112,000 on an Audi and bought $610,000 of jewelry from Tiffany & Co.

He faces up to 5 years in prison for conspiracy, 20 years for each of the five wire fraud counts and 10 years for each of the six money laundering counts, plus a possible $250,000 fine.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdtx/pr/local-physician-indicted-30-million-covid-19-fraud-scheme

 

Chevron appoints new CFO as part of CEO succession plan

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Jeff Gustavson has been appointed CFO of Chevron Corporation, effective January 1, 2027. He replaces Eimear Bonner, who becomes President, Oil, Products & Gas. Vice Chairman Mark Nelson gives up that role and takes on strategy and business development.



The company has revenues of $184.4 billion in 2025 and a market cap of around $400 billion, second only to ExxonMobil for those companies based in the Houston-area.

Mr. Gustavson, 54, joined Chevron in 1999 and has been President, New Energies since August 2021. From 2018 to 2021 he was vice president of Chevron North America Exploration and Production’s Mid-Continent Business Unit. Before that he was President of Chevron Canada. He has also worked in finance, M&A, strategic planning, supply and trading, and investor relations, with postings in the U.S., Canada, the UK and Venezuela.

Mr. Gustavson will receive a base salary of $1,000,000.

Ms. Bonner, 52, has been CFO since March 2024. She is a petroleum engineer who started offshore in the UK in 1998 and was previously Chevron’s chief technology officer. She has also had postings to Kazakhstan and Thailand.

It is widely believed that the reshuffle is part of planning for the CEO succession. Current CEO Mike Wirth, 65, has been in the role since 2018. Last year, he said he was in discussions with the board about the timing of his departure and didn’t expect to serve more than 10 years as CEO.  Both Mr.Gustavson and Ms. Bonner are seen as potential candidates to replace Mr. Wirth.

SEC filing 8-K – Chevron CFO appointment

AI Infrastructure company appoints new CFO

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Exascale Labs has appointed Jake Carney as its new CFO, effective September 25, 2026. He replaces Gildas Bonnier, who had been serving as interim CFO for the past month while the company searched for a permanent appointment.

Exascale gives its head office as west Houston (on Gessner Road), although until last month its press releases were datelined San Francisco and its phone number has a Bay Area area code. The company provides GPU computing infrastructure for AI customers.



 

The company went public at the end of August through a merger with a SPAC, D. Boral ARC Acquisition I Corp.  The SPAC deal valued the business at $500 million, based on $10 a share. The stock price has plunged since the deal closed and the current price is $1.85.

At the time of the going public, the company did not have a CFO. The CFO of the SPAC that took Exascale public was John Darwin, who previously worked at ARC Group Limited, an investment bank and management consultancy firm.

For the year to June 2026, Exascale had revenues of $14.8 million (up 111%) and a net loss of $12.2 million. Its market capitalization is $189 million.

Mr. Carney, 38, has a degree in Accounting and Finance from the Dublin Institute of Technology. He spent nearly five years at Beehive Fintech in Dubai as Investment Director, investing in small and medium-sized businesses across the Gulf. He then worked for two and a half years as Managing Director at ARC Group, where he set up its office in the UAE. More recently, he was CFO of Deal Flow Capital, a capital advisory firm, for six months to August 2026.

He is also the CFO of ARC Group Securities Acquisition I, another Nasdaq-listed SPAC, that went public in August 2026.

Mr. Carney will receive a base salary of $6,000 a month, or $72,000 a year.

I have added Exascale to the list of Houston-area public companies. You can see the complete list here.

SEC filing 8-K – Exascale appoints new CFO

EOG Resources appoints new CFO

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EOG Resources has appointed Jeff Hibbard as its next CFO, effective January 1, 2027. He replaces Ann Janssen, who has decided to retire after more than 30 years with the company.

EOG has its head office in downtown Houston and is one of the largest independent oil and gas producers in the US, with a market capitalization of around $73 billion.



Mr. Hibbard, 44, is currently EOG’s Senior VP, Finance, a role he took up when he joined the company in August 2025. Before that, he spent more than 20 years in investment banking at Morgan Stanley, most recently as a Managing Director in the Global Energy Group.

Ms. Janssen joined Enron Oil and Gas in 1995. That business was spun out of Enron in 1999 and renamed EOG Resources. She was Chief Accounting Officer from February 2018 through December 2023 and became CFO in January 2024. From January 2027 she will stay on as an advisor to the company until she retires later in 2027.

The filing gives no details of Mr. Hibbard’s new salary.

SEC filing 8-K – EOG appoints Hibbard

Crown Castle CFO to step down in March

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Sunit Patel, the CFO of Crown Castle will step down at the end of March 2027. He will be replaced by Kris Hinson, who is currently the Chief Commercial Officer.



The company also announced that Cathy Piche, the Chief Operating Officer, will leave at the end of February 2027. Crown Castle will conduct a search for her replacement.

Mr. Patel has only been the CFO since April 2025, though he joined Crown Castle as a non-executive director in January 2024. In their press release, the company described Mr. Patel’s departure as a retirement. While it is true that he will be 65 years old by the time he retires, he will also be receiving a severance package. He will get $1.25 million being one times base salary and target bonus, plus a pro-rated bonus for 2027. Mr. Patel will also get continued vesting of restricted stock units. At December 2025, they were worth $2.8 million.

Ms. Piche originally joined Crown Castle in 2011, then left for a competitor in October 2023, before being hired back a year later. Like Mr. Patel, she will get one times base and bonus ($1.1 million)  and a pro-rated bonus for 2027. Her restricted stock units will continue to vest (worth $1.5 million at December 2025).

Mr. Hinson joined the company in 2023 as VP, Corporate Finance and Treasurer. Prior to that, he spent 13 years at ExxonMobil in various roles, including Director of Investor Relations.

Recent Struggles

Crown Castle has a tumultuous few years.  Current CEO Chris Hillabrant was appointed in September 2025. His predecessor, Steven Moskowitz, was fired in March 2025 after just 11 months in the role. The CEO prior to that was forced out in December 2023, just ten days after Elliott Investment Management, an activist investor, urged the company to do so. Elliott had been pushing the company to divest of its fiber business and they were the ones who originally nominated Mr. Patel as a non-executive director.

At the beginning of May, the company sold its fiber business for $8.5 billion. Elliott had been pushing for that, so Mr. Patel departs after he has helped achieve that goal.

In anticipation of the sale, the company had reduced its headcount by 20% or 1,250 employees earlier in 2026. Those reductions were also accelerated by the financial difficulties of DISH Wireless, a major customer. Crown Castle has sued DISH over the cancellation of its contract and for monies owed.

SEC filing – 8-K Crown Castle CFO change