Alphabet, the holding company of Google, has announced Anat Ashkenazi has been named as its new CFO and senior vice president of Google and Alphabet. The appointment becomes effective on July 31, 2024. Ashkenazi previously served as CFO at the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and Company, where she held various senior leadership positions for over 23 years.
Ashkenazi takes over the CFO role from Ruth Porat who, announced in July of last year, would be taking on a newly created role of president and chief investment officer, effective last September. Porat was the longest-tenured CFO in the company’s history, originally joining in 2015 after her time as the chief financial officer at Morgan Stanley.
Ashkenazi held the CFO role at Lilly for nearly four years. Before serving as the top finance chief, she was senior vice president, controller and CFO of Lilly Research Laboratories. In this role, according to a Lilly press release, she oversaw the CFOs of the company’s commercial businesses and R&D, manufacturing, quality and G&A. She also served as finance chief for several of the company’s global businesses.
Alphabet and Porat made news earlier this year when in an internal memo she wrote to the finance team, it was announced Google would be restructuring its finance organization to pursue AI initiatives. The reorganization would include layoffs and relocations. In her new role, Ashkenazi will likely be the one to spearhead this reorganization, which will impact finance teams around the world, creating hubs for more centralized finance operations in more cost-effective regions.
