Visa's finance chief Vasant Prabhu to leave payments giant

By Manya Saini

(Reuters) -Visa said on Thursday its chief financial officer, Vasant Prabhu, will leave the company on Sept. 30, after eight years as one of the top executives at the payments giant.

Shares in Visa, which have gained about 9% so far this year, were down marginally in extended trading after the announcement.

The leadership change comes at a time when Visa is grappling with revenue growth winding back to pre-pandemic levels in the first quarter as the post-lockdown travel craze ebbed and consumer spending slowed.

In November, the world's largest payments processor had also named its president, Ryan McInerney, as its new chief executive officer to steer the company through a challenging period for the payments industry as consumers tighten their spending.

"The transition is very smooth and this is normal that a CFO that worked with a CEO for many years is not staying for the new leadership," Dan Dolev, Managing Director, Mizuho Securities USA told Reuters.

"Either way, the fundamentals are a much more important driver of the stock in this case, and management changes are unlikely to affect them."

Wedbush analyst Moshe Katri told Reuters that under Prabhu, the company built a large Value Added Services (VAS) segment, expanded into new payment flows and successfully navigated an evolving regulatory environment.

Prabhu, who joined the company in 2015, will assist the company with the search for his replacement. He will also be stepping down from his role as the vice-chair of Visa.

"Prabhu has been a vital element of Visa's success story over the past eight years and his departure will be a loss for the company," KBW analysts wrote in a note, adding the payments processor should have no dearth of candidates to succeed Prabhu.

(Reporting by Manya Saini in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri)