Twitter finance head Anthony Noto is adding helping hands in the finance department as he is burdened with the additional responsibility of overseeing the company’s marketing department. Noto revealed the new hires to his team on Tuesday, says a report from the Wall Street Journal.
Rising clout of Noto at Twitter
For the senior positions, Noto hired five executives (chief accounting officer, two vice presidents and two directors) including Todd Morgenfeld from Hewlett-Packard and former Goldman Sachs executive Steve McGuinness, notes the report, citing sources familiar with the matter. Amy Johnson of Google and Greg Ligotti of Peet’s Coffee Tea will be the new finance managers, while Deloitte Touche veteran Robert Kaiden will replace Luca Baratta as the chief accounting officer.
The timing of the new hires is interesting as it follows a related news of Noto bringing the marketing team under his jurisdiction, taking it away from the product department. The recent moves certainly reflect the growing influence of Noto, who joined Twitter only last year. Noto was among the highest paid executives at Twitter last year, and played a big role in finalizing some of recent deals for Twitter including the Google search deal, and the attempt to acquire news site Mic News.
What’s next for marketing team?
The new changes might also have input from from Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, who was widely criticized after the company’s quarterly revenue missed estimates. Since the announcement of earnings, Twitter shares are down 28%. At that time, Noto pinned the blame on the demand issue for its advertising products that are similar to tweets, but have links in them.
Twitter’s marketing team has been under pressure recently due to the company’s struggle to increase user growth. The team, which was headed by Twitter’s chief communications officer Gabriel Stricker, was moved under Twitter’s vice president of product Kevin Weil in January, and now Noto will be heading it. We will have to wait and see if Noto ends the micro-blogging company’s search for a marketing chief, but one thing is for sure…we will see more management restructuring going forward.
