Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Walmart heiress Alice Walton takes L’Oréal heiress Françoise Bettencourt Meyers’s spot as the richest woman in the world, the gender pay gap at large companies in Japan is not improving, and a Goldman Sachs exec is an innovator in sports. The Broadsheet will be off on Monday for Labor Day in the U.S.—we’ll be back in your inbox on Tuesday.
– In the crowd. Much of the most exciting activity in sports right now is happening on the women’s side, but they can’t claim all the innovation. Consider Stacy Sonnenberg, a Goldman Sachs executive who has quietly revolutionized sports team’s stadiums and revenue models across men’s soccer, Major League Baseball, and the NFL.
Sonnenberg is Goldman’s global head of sports finance, and my colleague Michael del Castillo explores her impact in a new feature for Fortune. In her role, she has financed projects from Yankee Stadium to an especially notable effort: the new stadium for FC Barcelona, a $5.6 billion franchise nevertheless troubled by mismanagement. The team is part-owned by 150,000 dues-paying fans who wouldn’t approve a mortgage for a $1.6 billion expansion, worried that the stadium could close if it missed payments.
To overcome that hurdle, Sonnenberg came up with the idea to securitize “extraordinary revenue” or future sales of food, beverage, and tickets, Michael reports. “That has not been done before,” Sonnenberg says. An ex-New York City Department of Parks and Recreation executive, she discovered a model similar to cities’ strategy of selling bonds securities backed by future revenue from parking or tolls.
The firm is now shopping the model wherever it’s permitted, including another deal in Lyon, France, Michael reports.
The executive finds purpose in her work helping multibillion-dollar sports franchises get even bigger. “Stadiums are fundamental to our humanity, and there’s a reason we’ve been building them for thousands of years. We crave that shared experience.”
Read Michael’s full story here.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
The Broadsheet is Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Today’s edition was curated by Nina Ajemian. Subscribe here.
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- Sit down. In her first live interview since becoming the Democratic presidential candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris said her values haven’t changed even if some of her positions have. Asked about Donald Trump's attack on her race, Harris said it was the "same old, tired playbook." CNN
- World's richest woman. L'Oréal heiress Françoise Bettencourt Meyers is no longer the richest woman in the world. Alice Walton, heiress to the Walmart fortune, has taken her place. Walton, who runs Walton Enterprises, is currently the 18th richest person in the world with $95.7 billion. Fortune
- Commission candidates. President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen asked the bloc’s 27 countries to put forward both male and female candidates for commission leadership positions in a push towards gender equality. As of Thursday, only five countries presented female candidates ahead of the submission deadline; 17 countries nominated men only and three countries had not yet submitted their candidates. New York Times
- Not making progress. In 2022, Japan required companies to reveal their gender pay gaps. Seventy of Japan’s 100 largest companies by market cap shared two years' worth of their data, revealing that only one company’s gender pay gap improved by more than 5%. Bloomberg
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Amy Weaver will step down as Salesforce's CFO. She'll stay on until the company hires a successor.
Tony Roma’s, a chain of casual dining restaurants, appointed Mohaimina “Mina” Haque as chief executive officer; she is the company's first female CEO. Haque was serving as interim CEO.
Arkema, a materials manufacturer, appointed Sophie Fouillat as executive vice president. Previously, she was strategy and M&A director at Bostik.
Empire Today, a flooring company, appointed Kristin Prudhomme as president of Empire for Business. Most recently, she was chief executive officer of Forrester Construction.
Headway, a mental healthcare system developer, appointed Susan Chiang as chief information security officer. Most recently, she served as acting chief security officer at Cloudflare.
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Meghan Markle is a 'dolphin' investor, not a shark New York Times
Signal is more than encrypted messaging. Under Meredith Whittaker, it’s out to prove surveillance capitalism wrong Wired
The woman behind fashion’s favorite cult shoes strikes out on her own Wall Street Journal
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"[Men] get to play rugby and they get paid millions of dollars while we make minimum wage and this won't be a career for us."
—USA Rugby star Ilona Maher, who appears on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit digital edition
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