Apple is replaying its Jony Ive trick to manage Maestri’s departure

Apple yesterday announced Luca Maestri’s upcoming departure from his long-held role as the company’s chief financial officer (CFO), with the relatively unknown Kevan Parekh replacing him.

It’s no coincidence that Apple made the announcement on the same day it issued invitations to its Glowtime event on September 9, and it very much looks like the company is revisiting its playbook for managing the departure of former design chief Jony Ive …

All other things being equal, big investors don’t like change. Unless they are actively unhappy with the performance of an exec – which is not the case with Maestri – then any change in the company’s leadership could make them nervous.

Maestri has held the role now for a decade, and seems to have managed to keep both investors and analysts happy with the way he has carried out his duties.

Parekh is no novice. He’s worked at Apple for 11 years, and is currently VP of Financial Planning and Analysis. There’s absolutely no reason to believe he won’t make a perfectly suitable replacement. However, his low profile means most investors and analysts won’t know him, and Apple will need to find a way to reassure them that nothing significant is changing.

The illusion of continued involvement

The company appears to be managing this in a very similar way to the way it handled Jony Ive’s decision to leave the company back in 2019 – by creating a fictitious narrative about continued involvement.

In the case of Ive, Apple claimed that the design chief would still be working for the company on a freelance basis. Tim Cook said:

“Apple will continue to benefit from Jony’s talents by working directly with him on exclusive projects, and through the ongoing work of the brilliant and passionate design team he has built. After so many years working closely together, I’m happy that our relationship continues to evolve and I look forward to working with Jony long into the future.”

With Ive echoing this version of events:

“While I will not be an [Apple] employee, I will still be very involved — I hope for many, many years to come,” Sir Jonathan told the FT in an exclusive interview.

In reality, there was no sign of this ever happening, and company insiders indicated that there had never been any real intention of this. Apple simply wanted investors to see that the company could manage perfectly well without Ive, and once this goal had been achieved, it could quietly drop the pretence.

Maestri will clearly depart within a year or so

The narrative in Maestri’s case is that he will remain with the company, carrying out other duties.

Maestri will continue to lead the Corporate Services teams, including information systems and technology, information security, and real estate and development.

In reality, you don’t take a demotion from CFO to focus on what were very much secondary roles.

We can expect Maestri to remain on the payroll for a while after he steps down, but it’s unlikely he will have any real duties, and I’d put money on another of those quiet announcements within a year or so, this time saying he has retired or otherwise left to pursue other interests.

Photo by Joseph Two on Unsplash