The hiring comes as the tech company's IPO plans are stalled
TikTok owner ByteDance has appointed corporate attorney Julie Gao as its new chief financial officer, filling a post that has been vacant for five months as the tech company faces an impasse over its plans for IPO.
According to an internal memo sent to staff on Monday, Gao, currently a Hong Kong-based capital markets attorney at the law firm Skadden, will be based in Hong Kong and Singapore once she joins ByteDance in May.
The move comes after ByteDance's former CFO Shou Zi Chew, who joined the company in March last year, stepped down in November from the CFO role to focus on being TikTok's CEO.
Gao is famous for helping Chinese tech companies to be listed overseas. In 2003, she provided legal counsel for the IPO process of Trip.com (TCOM: Nasdaq). In 2018, she participated in seven of the top ten IPOs in the industry, including Xiaomi (01810: HK), Meituan (03690), and Pinduoduo (PDD: Nasdaq).
Words about ByteDance's IPO plans have come out since 2018, but no progress has been made. One of the world's largest private companies, ByteDance had a valuation of about USD 300 billion in trades earlier this year.