Businesses in the News: Friday, November 13, 2026

A collection of FinTech business news announcements for the period ending November 13, 2026... like an "old-time-newspaper's weekly business news" section.

CData Appoints New CFO and Board Member 

CData, has announced the appointment of James Rochette as Chief Financial Officer and June Yang to its Board of Directors.

Rochette, former Google Cloud VP, brings more than 30 years of finance and operating experience across private equity-backed and publicly traded technology companies, to CData as it scales the AI gateway that gives agents governed connectivity and context across enterprise systems.

Yang brings deep expertise in AI, cloud and data infrastructure from her leadership roles at Google Cloud and VMware.

For all the details regarding these appointments, head over to the official press announcement HERE. 

Intuit's 2026 Holiday Shopping Survey reports $278-Billion in Consumer Spending, with Record $118-Billion Share for Small Businesses

As Black Friday/Cyber Monday approaches, consumers are heading into the biggest shopping weekend on a mission to pay less, and they’re turning to AI, payment plans, and side gigs for help.

New data from the Intuit QuickBooks Holiday Survey shows how far shoppers will go to stretch their budgets this year:

• • AI is the new deal finder: Over 60% of shoppers are using AI to find a better price or discount, but only 15% have let an AI assistant complete a purchase.

  • Payment flexibility is part of the strategy: 21% of Gen Z and 24% of Millennials plan to use Buy Now, Pay Later, compared with just 6% of Boomers.

  • It's the season for side gigs: 15% of lower-income shoppers are picking up seasonal work or a side gig to pay for the holidays, more than double the rate of upper-income shoppers (7%), and 19% say they'll cut back on essentials like groceries or utilities.

  • Prices and shipping are top of mind: 61% say rising prices are bothering them, and 41% expect higher shipping and delivery costs, up from 33% last year.

  • Small businesses are in the mix: Even with the focus on savings, shoppers plan to send $118B to small businesses, a record.

The full survey details can be found HERE.

Opensity Spends a Year Pressure-testing Its Own Methodology for Operational Transformation

Opensity Solutions, formed one year ago through the combination of K2 Services, Epiq Global Business Transformation Services and Forrest Solutions, has completed the integration of its core operating systems — work the company ran using the same methodology it applies to client engagements.

Opensity made the deliberate decision to do so because its business is operational transformation for organizations where technology, people, workflows, service delivery and vendor relationships intersect. Running its own merger that way meant testing the methodology under conditions it could neither control nor shorten real deadlines, live client work and its own people absorbing the change. 

You can read more about this 'pressure-testing' in the official press announcement HERE. 

In addition, Michelle Deichmeister, CEO at Opensity Solutions has written about what the year clarified: decision-making under pressure, change management and why operating models are never truly finished, in “What Changes When You Run Your Own Playbook on Yourself,” available here.

Sovos Announces New Chief AI and Chief Data Officers

Sovos, a global tax compliance company which recently acquired Blue dot and Flowie, has announced that it is further establishing itself as an agentic era tax compliance leader by appointing Yann Ravel-Sibillot (of Flowie) as Chief AI Officer and Yoni Lavi (of Blue dot) as Chief Data Officer.

Yoni and Yann are former company founders and bring deep AI and technical expertise to Sovos’s compliance platform, which serves the tax needs of over 100K customers globally.

Yann will lead the company's AI strategy, focusing on responsible and practical AI adoption to build efficiencies across customers’ tax and finance departments. Yoni, with his extensive legal background and 20 years of SaaS experience, will focus on turning the Sovos regulatory and transactional datasets into a strategic advantage that continuously makes customers smarter, faster, and more efficient over time, while remaining compliant.

For more information regarding these two executive appointments head over to the official press release HERE.

 Vertex Releases its 2026 CompOps Index

Vertex released its 2026 CompOps index, which is a new study that looks into how far companies have progressed in adopting AI for tax and compliance.  Companies that lack board oversight of indirect tax are more likely to discover compliance errors from outside sources, while even those with stronger governance struggle to show why their tax decisions are correct.

Additional findings include:

• Only 16% of companies review indirect tax as a standing board agenda item, even though taxes affect nearly every sale and purchase a business makes.

• 43% of companies discuss tax matters at the board level only when a problem arises, or rarely or never.

• Companies with limited board involvement are 4x as likely to learn about tax errors from outside sources. 
• 74% set aside money for potential tax liabilities, with many doing so because they lack supporting documentation rather than because tax laws are unclear. 

Even as companies strengthen governance and adopt AI, they still struggle to demonstrate that their tax decisions are correct, potentially creating unnecessary costs and compliance risks. 

For more details, head over to the official press release at: Only One in Six Enterprises Treats Indirect Tax as a Standing Board Item.