Amazon replaced the chief financial officer of its multibillion-dollar cloud business in an executive shuffle
- An Amazon spokesperson on Tuesday confirmed Sean Boyle - chief financial officer of the Amazon Web Services cloud computing business since 2015 - has "moved to another role within AWS."
- Luis Visoso, most recently the CFO of the consumer side of Amazon's business, has taken over the role.
- Boyle's LinkedIn profile lists the title of "vice president" as of this month.
- Amazon declined to provide information about the reason behind the change, or disclose whether there's a new CFO for Amazon's worldwide consumer business.
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Amazon has replaced the chief financial officer of the company's multibillion-dollar cloud business with an executive from the consumer side of its empire, the company confirmed.
An Amazon spokesperson on Tuesday confirmed Sean Boyle - chief financial officer of the Amazon Web Services unit since 2015 - has "moved to another role within AWS." Luis Visoso, most recently the CFO of the consumer side of Amazon's business, has taken over.
Amazon declined to comment on the reason behind the change, or to disclose whether there's a new CFO for Amazon's worldwide consumer business.
Boyle's LinkedIn profile lists the title of "vice president" as of this month, though it doesn't go into more specifics. Visoso, meanwhile, joined Amazon in 2018 as CFO of the company's worldwide consumer business from Cisco, where he was the senior vice president of the company's business, technology, and operations finances.
The CFO position at Amazon Web Services is significant as Amazon faces antitrust scrutiny. Gary Reback, who was once known as "Bill Gates's worst nightmare," recently told Business Insider that the FTC is looking into how Amazon may be using its dominant position in the cloud to stifle competition.
Amazon Web Services is answerable to top-level Amazon execs like CEO Jeff Bezos and CFO Brian Olsavsky, but it practically runs independently thanks to its own executive leadership - headed by Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon Web Services, and supported by the CFO.
The CFO role would be especially important in the event Amazon spins out AWS; a turn of events which by most accounts, including Amazon's own, would be unlikely. However, pundits and other observers have raised the possibility of such a move as a potential solution to appease regulators.
AWS is an important profit driver for Amazon's broader empire. The last time that Amazon reported earnings, it said that AWS had booked some $9 billion in revenue, and that the unit accounted for some 72% of the company's nearly $3.2 billion in operating income for the quarter.
Research firm Morningstar in 2019 estimated AWS is worth more than $550 billion on its own - more than half of Amazon's $873 billion market cap, at the time of writing. AWS is also the most profitable part of Amazon's business.
Boyle, the former CFO, originally joined Amazon in 2006 as a finance director but left the company for about a year and a half beginning in 2013 to serve as chief financial officer for Bellevue, Washington-based IT management company Apptio.
