Fran Shammo Announces Retirement from Verizon

Verizon’s Chief Financial Officer, Francis Shammo, has announced his retirement plans today, in a post located on the company’s news site. Shammo has been with the company for 27 years, and will be retiring at the end of the year. Being the CFO of Verizon means that a replacement is needed before he retires, and effective November 1st, Matthew Ellis will take on the new role. Ellis currently serves as senior vice president and CFO – Operations Finance. He has been responsible for financial support for both the wireless and wireline business units at Verizon. Ellis has been with Verizon since 2013, coming over from Tyson Foods, Inc.

Chief Executive Officer, Lower McAdam said in a prepared statement that he’s “worked closely with Fran for many years and have been continually impressed by his success at balancing the needs of customers, shareholders and employees.” He went on to praise his leadership skills, advice and what he has meant to the leadership team at Verizon. Turning to the new CFO, effective in November, McAdam said of Ellis that “within months of joining Verizon as treasurer in 2013, Matt led the team that raised a record $49 billion in one day to help finance Verizon’s acquisition of Vodafone’s interest in Verizon Wireless.”

Shammo has served as CFO for Verizon since 2010, after spending 21 years with the company. Shammo joined in 1989 which was before Verizon existed, it was Bell Atlantic Mobile at that time. Shammo rose through the ranks to become president and chief executive officer of Verizon Telecom and Business, before becoming CFO. Shammo has been responsible for some of the major purchases that Verizon has made in recent years, like buying AOL and Yahoo!. 

This means some rather big changes are coming to Verizon, but from a customer standpoint, you’ll likely notice nothing new. Executives often time switch things up. Some depart for another company, or in this case, they retire, and get replaced with someone else. Customers don’t usually know that anything has happened. So this means that customers won’t see their bills go up or service cut or even Verizon’s smartphone portfolio shrink.