Pre-IPO Square’s New SME Finance Head

Jacqueline Reses, currently Yahoo’s chief development officer, is reportedly leaving Yahoo for Square. Reses’ main focus recently at Yahoo has been spinning off the firm’s stake in the Alibaba Group — a hold worth about $27 billion.

Reses will head Square’s corporate finance arm, Square Capital, reports said Monday (Oct. 19); the company has already facilitated more than $225 million to companies since launching operations in May of last year, reports said.

[bctt tweet=”Jacqueline Reses will head Square’s corporate finance arm, Square Capital”]

In a statement announcing her new position, Reses elaborated on Square Capital’s recent successes.

“Square Capital reaches businesses that traditional financial institutions often neglect, and I’m very excited to expand that opportunity to others,” she said. “I believe in Square’s mission and I’m thrilled to be joining the Square family and working with the team to support the company’s continued commitment to sellers of all sizes.”

Seasoned and professional, Reses is both a major loss for Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and a big pick up for Jack Dorsey’s executive team at Square, pre-IPO. She also could theoretically lessen Dorsey’s load, as he is pulling double duty as both Square and Twitter CEO.

In his own statement, Dorsey called Reses a “perfect fit” to lead to unit.

Reses enters Square at an interesting time, but, moreover, Reses is exiting Yahoo at a tricky time, as the firm will be spinning off its stake in Alibaba — one of the main sources of the company’s stock value — by the end of the year. The board has authorized the spinoff, though the IRS has as of yet not granted an advanced ruling to bless the deal. According to Bloomberg, the agency is ratcheting up its scrutiny of such transactions and is unlikely to issue a retroactive decision.

Reses is one of many high-profile losses in the upper management team at Yahoo. In Mayer’s three-year tenure, Chief Marketing Officer Kathy Savitt left to join movie studio STX Entertainment; Head of North American Ad Sales Kevin Gentzel and SVP Mike Kerns also recently departed as well.