Afterpay has formally appointed Elana Rubin as its chairman, a role she has filled on an interim basis since last year when the company founders announced they would surrender control of the buy now, pay later provider’s board.
Ms Rubin also announced that she would step down from the board of Members Equity Bank which has been dogged by revelations in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age this month that it had unilaterally reduced the amount of money thousands of customers could access from their redraw facilities. The policy has since been reversed.
"Following an extensive global search … the board deemed that Elana was best placed to lead the board of Afterpay," company co-founder and chief executive Anthony Eisen said. "Her ongoing stewardship and focus on good corporate governance will continue to deliver value to shareholders."
The decision to make the Afterpay board independent was made in July last year following a turbulent month which saw the company receive three inquiries from the ASX, and an audit from AUSTRAC into its compliance with money-laundering laws.
The announcement was made Monday morning ahead of the stock reaching a fresh intraday record high of $47.47. Elana Rubin has been appointed Afterpay chairman and stepped down from her board seat at Members Equity Bank. Credit:Photo: Rob Homer This represents a rise of almost 600 per cent since its March low when the markets were pricing in a significant financial hit from the pandemic-induced recession which is now hitting its key markets.
It has also been boosted by the news that Tencent, which owns social media and payments app WeChat with its 1.2 billion customers, had become a strategic investor , as well as better than expected customer numbers in the US last week.
UBS issued a report this week upgrading its price target on the stock based on the 5 million active US customers Afterpay announced,
"Given the impressive US customer growth, we assume that Afterpay’s credit decisioning system is performing well, we therefore lower the magnitude of our bad debt forecasts for FY2021," said UBS.
But it remains sceptical about the company’s valuation with a target of just $14. UBS said Afterpay is currently trading at 13.5 times its book value compared to its valuation of the stock at 4.3 times.
Afterpay also announced on Monday that US executive Sharon Rothstein will join the board as of June 1. She is the former chief global marketing officer for […]
