Mattel names Peter Griffith as its second CFO in under 18 months
Toy maker Mattel just named Peter Griffith as chief financial officer.
The short version
- He replaces Paul Ruh, who held the job since May 2025.
- Griffith gets a 1.3 million dollar base salary plus a 1.4 million dollar signing bonus.
- The company also faces outside pressure from investors to consider a sale.
Mattel, the toy company that makes Barbie and Hot Wheels, is bringing on Peter Griffith as its chief financial officer, effective Tuesday, according to Yahoo Finance. Griffith succeeds Paul Ruh, who will serve as an adviser through the end of the year to support the transition after stepping into the role in May 2025.
Griffith comes to Mattel from Amgen, the big biotechnology company, where he served as executive vice president and chief financial officer. The executive changes are happening amid outside pressure for Mattel to consider a sale. At the start of October, Ariel Investments, the investment management firm, pushed for the toy company to explore strategic alternatives, including a potential divestiture of assets, a merger or a sale.
Southeastern Asset Management, another investment firm, also wrote an open letter to Mattel this spring with a similar ask to sell itself to private equity, another toy company or a media business. The toy company's appointment of a chief financial officer comes weeks after the company named a new chief executive.
At the end of September, Roger Lynch, the former chief executive of Condé Nast, the magazine publisher, was named chief executive after serving on Mattel's board since 2018. Then-chief executive Ynon Kreiz stepped down from the top Mattel spot and was shortly thereafter named co-chief executive of the Paramount and Warner Bros. combined company.
Griffith brings to Mattel expertise in strategic transactions, capital allocation, technology investments, cybersecurity and business transformation, alongside two decades as a partner at EY, the accounting and professional services firm formerly known as Ernst & Young. Griffith will receive an annual base salary of 1.3 million dollars and will have a bonus opportunity of up to 200% of his base salary, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the federal financial regulator.
He will also gain a new-hire, performance-based restricted stock unit award of 3.3 million dollars, which will vest at the end of a three-year period, alongside a cash signing bonus of 1.4 million dollars. In its latest earnings, Mattel reported net sales were up 10% year over year to 1.1 billion dollars, though the company reported a net loss of 18 million dollars in the second quarter, compared to a net income of 53 million dollars in the year-ago period. When a boardroom keeps changing the playbook, the dolls better keep selling.
Photo: Jelson25, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
