Zynga CFO quits for senior finance job at Facebook, more changes
Zynga's Chief Financial Officer Dave Wehner has resigned to take a senior finance position at Facebook, causing a wave of corporate changes at Zynga. The most notable shift places Mark Vranesh, the former CFO who was demoted when Wehner joined Zynga in 2010, back into his previous role alongside his current position as chief accounting officer.
Former Chief Mobile Officer David Ko is now chief operations officer. The COO position has been vacant since August 2012, when John Schappert resigned. Barry Cottle, former executive vice president of business and corporate development, is now chief revenue officer, and Steven Chiang, previous executive vice president of games, is now president of games.
In an internal memo, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus wished Wehner the best of luck.
"These changes come at an important time," Pincus wrote. "We are positioning ourselves for long-term growth and I'm confident that we have the breadth and depth of management talent to deliver on our mission of connecting the world through games. We are also today reaffirming our 2012 financial outlook that we communicated on October 24, 2012."
This corporate shake-up follows a larger rumble in October that saw Zynga lay-off five percent of its full-time workforce, including closing its Boston Studio, significantly reducing staff in Austin, retiring 13 games, reducing investment in The Ville and considering closures in Japan and the UK. Zynga reported a loss of $52.7 million in Q3 2012, compared with a profit of $12.5 million in Q3 2011.
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INTERNAL NOTE FROM FOUNDER AND CEO MARK PINCUS
Team:
Today we're announcing some important changes to the responsibilities of our senior team.
David Ko has been named chief operations officer. In his new role, he will oversee strategy planning, international, infrastructure and operations of the company. Since joining us in 2010, we've all seen Dave scale our mobile organization, grow our portfolio by 25 new games and help unite game development teams on our cross platform efforts.
Barry Cottle has been named our chief revenue officer and will be responsible for corporate and business development, distribution, strategic partnerships, advertising sales and operations, publishing and real money gaming. Barry is a seasoned leader having built and scaled businesses for Palm, The Walt Disney Company and Electronic Arts.
Steve Chiang has been named our president of games where he will oversee all games and new IP development across web and mobile and unite all of our game teams under one leader. We've all seen Steve guide the game development of Bubble Safari, ChefVille and FarmVille2 among others. He has more than 20 years of experience in the game industry building AAA titles and teams.
I also wanted to let you know that our CFO, Dave Wehner is leaving to accept a senior position with Facebook.
Dave provided great leadership to our financial team over the past two years, helping guide the company's transition from startup through IPO. Dave has been a great partner for me, the senior team and the whole company. He remains a good friend to us all and we wish him success in his next endeavor.
Mark Vranesh has been named our chief financial officer. This is a role he knows well – he was our CFO during our rapid growth as a private company. As CFO, Mark built and ran our finance, accounting and controls functions and transitioned to the role of chief accounting officer in 2010.
These changes come at an important time. We are positioning ourselves for long-term growth and I'm confident that we have the breadth and depth of management talent to deliver on our mission of connecting the world through games. We are also today reaffirming our 2012 financial outlook that we communicated on October 24, 2012.
With some of our recent game success and the great work that's being done to move with our players to mobile, we're making progress. We still have a lot of work to do, but it's been great to see so many of you step forward to put us on the move again.
Please join me in congratulating David, Barry, Steve and Mark on their new roles.
Mark
