Radars generally go up a little bit when a company that has openly talked about going on the public markets goes and hires a new chief financial officer.
And so a slight raising of eyebrows in various quarters this week when Sabre Holdings, mothership for the Hospitality, Airline Solutions, Travel Network and Travelocity brands, appointed a new CFO in the form of Rick Simonson.
Simonson, who joins from Reardon Commerce where he was CFO and president of business operations, has plenty of technology and financial acumen having spent ten years at Nokia in a variety of roles around the globe.
This period included being CFO and executive vice president for five years.
The investment and financial institutional experience is all there, too, with stints at both Barclays Capital and Bank of America, as well as board positions at Electronic Arts and Silver Spring Networks.
Simonson takes over the role (and an executive vice president title) from Mark Miller, a long-term Sabre employee of 18 years, including four years as CFO, who is leaving the company to "explore opportunities" within TPG or Silver Lake, the two private equity firms that currently own Sabre.
A new CFO doesn't automatically guarantee there is some kind of "liquidity event" on the horizon for Sabre, but equally president and CEO Sam Gilliland has made it clear in the past that he would like to take the company public at some point.
Gilliland first made mention of it back in October 2009 in an interview with the Dallas Morning News, just as its GDS rivals were mulling their own public listings (Amadeus's completed, Travelport's didn't).
Late-2011 saw Gilliland raise the idea again and a report in February this year claimed Sabre was eyeing the IPO route once again.
Sabre declined to comment at the time of the last round of speculation. But Simonson's arrival this week will only serve to spin that rumour-mill a little bit faster.