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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.
Zynga hires new CFO, Vranesh becomes chief accounting officer
For those of you keeping a diligent collection of Zynga executive trading cards, that 2009 Mark Vranesh as CFO card is about to become worth a whole lot more -- the social game company has just hired on Dave Wehner as its new CFO, pushing Vranesh to the chief accounting officer position. Vranesh's new position will have him reporting to the new CFO. Wehner comes from a background in financial work, acting as the managing director at investment banking firm Allen & Co. since 2001. VentureBeat speculates that this hire could be one of many clues that the company is about to go public, but "a source familiar with the matter" believes that possibility is unlikely, instead positing that Zynga will continue hiring execs/buying other companies. Either way, we're still worried about the impending takeover of our lives by the Zynga/Google partnership. It's coming any day now, folks!
