Binance names Justin Yek as new CFO after a $6.3 billion hack

Taking on a CFO role for the first time is no small feat. Doing it at Binance, the world’s largest digital currency exchange, in the aftermath of what has been described as the biggest heist in crypto history, is quite another. Justin Yek, a former VP of finance at Airwallex, a global payments and financial platform, will become Binance’s new CFO, succeeding Kaiser Ng, who has held the position since 2022 and is stepping down to pursue a new venture, according to Fortune.

Binance co-CEO Yi He said in a statement that a transition plan had been implemented over the last half year. On Oct. 29, hackers drained an estimated $6.3 billion from the platform, Fortune reported. Binance later said North Korean hackers orchestrated the attack, using social engineering and malicious software to compromise engineers and gain access to systems that enabled unauthorized withdrawals.

The damage was partly contained. Tether, which issues digital stablecoins, and Circle, which operates the USDC stablecoin, froze about $2.5 billion in stolen stablecoins. Binance says it has replenished 98% of the stolen coins through reserve funds and other sources, and that users won’t bear the losses.

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But the incident brings questions that go beyond cybersecurity. How strong are Binance’s internal controls, and how can the exchange convince customers and regulators that their assets are safe? Those are questions that will inevitably land on the new CFO’s desk.

Yek brings a résumé suited to a growing global fintech. At Airwallex, he progressed from head of strategic finance to VP of finance, leading the global finance team. Before that, he spent about nine years in investment banking at Citi and Morgan Stanley, working on more than $30 billion in transactions, according to his LinkedIn profile.

That is substantial experience in corporate finance and dealmaking. But the CFO title is new to Yek, and he lacks the crypto-exchange experience of Ng, who joined Binance from Kraken, a digital asset exchange. At Binance, Yek’s first test as CFO will be helping restore the trust that money alone can’t replace.