SolarCity Corporation recently announced that it has promoted Executive Vice President of Global Capital Markets Radford Small to the role of Chief Financial Officer, reporting to CEO Lyndon Rive.
Mr. Small, among the most experienced executives in renewable energy finance, has enjoyed a successful tenure at SolarCity, where he helped the company create approximately $3 billion in new financing for solar projects. “Rad” initially joined SolarCity in 2015 to oversee financial business development and investor relations, and his role has steadily expanded to include all of the company’s global capital markets activity.
“Rad has been a tremendous asset—he’s excelled at everything we’ve put on his plate—and he brings an incredibly valuable skillset to a potential combination of Tesla and SolarCity,” said CEO Lyndon Rive. “This promotion largely reflects the reality of the current roles and responsibilities in SolarCity’s finance department. Rad has been leading our efforts in the capital markets for some time, and has been playing an increasingly visible role in financial planning and analysis, investor relations and accounting.”
Mr. Small originally joined SolarCity from Goldman, Sachs & Co. where he was a Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer for the Clean Technology and Renewables group. Over his 17 year career in the Investment Banking Division, he raised more than $20 billion in financing and worked on over $25 billion of mergers and acquisitions transactions. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from University of California at Berkeley, a Juris Doctorate degree from Loyola Law School and Master of Laws (LLM) degree from New York University School of Law.
SolarCity also announced that President Tanguy Serra, who previously oversaw finance as part of his responsibilities, will be departing SolarCity at the end of the year, following the anticipated acquisition of the company by Tesla. Mr. Serra helped the company achieve new breakthroughs in operations costs, and helped recruit an extremely strong finance team to the company, including Mr. Small.
“Tanguy has played a pivotal role in helping SolarCity achieve the lowest operations costs in the solar industry,” said Rive. “He is extremely talented, but due to overlap at the new company, he is going to pursue a new venture. I’m grateful for everything Tanguy has contributed to SolarCity.”
