Apple is reshuffling its deal-making ranks, and the M&A desk is moving back under the CFO's roof.
CEO John Ternus has shifted mergers and acquisitions duties from longtime dealmaker Adrian Perica to Apple veteran Steve Smith, according to Bloomberg. Smith will now report to CFO Kevan Parekh, pulling M&A back into the finance organization after years of sitting under Tim Cook's direct oversight. Perica isn't leaving; he'll keep running iCloud, Fitness+, and Apple News, a portfolio he's held since 2023, but now answers to services chief Eddy Cue instead of Cook. The move is part of a wider leadership shuffle that also touches the still-vacant App Store chief seat, which Phil Schiller left in late August.
M&A at Apple isn't a sleepy backroom job. It's the team that negotiated the OpenAI agreement bringing ChatGPT into Siri, among other high-stakes deals. Handing that function to finance rather than keeping it tied to the CEO's office suggests Apple wants deal scrutiny running through the same lens as budgeting, not just strategy. It also puts Perica in an odd spot: he's reportedly a candidate to fill Schiller's old App Store job, alongside Apple Music head Oliver Schusser, even as he loses the M&A title he held for years.
About six weeks after Schiller's exit, Cue is still auditioning successors, a reminder that Apple's leadership moves rarely happen in one clean swap.