San Francisco, US, January 23 — Twitter announces today that Anthony Noto, who served as Chief Operating Officer since November 2016 and was their Chief Financial Officer since July 2014, will depart from the micro-blogging platform. Effective starting from March 1st, Noto will serve as Chief Executive Officer of lending and wealth management startup SoFi.
Twitter stumbles temporarily
As soon as noise got out about a potential leadership change, it directly affected the Twitter stock price on NYSE (TWTR) with a fall of two percent and a continued negative trend as of today. Analysts find that Twitter is running out of chances to turn the business around to generate more revenue.
Only a few days ago we reported about the not-that-successful new Twitter Promote Mode advertising subscription model and while we had not many expectations, we wouldn’t recommend using it. Twitter keeps on trying to push for new features and ways to be attractive to commercial partners, but their innovation often leaves room for improvement and the investors unimpressed. Top-management staff jumping ship isn’t really an indicator for a growing business.
“Anthony has been an incredible advocate for Twitter and a trusted partner to me and our leadership team,” said Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s CEO. “On behalf of the entire team, I want to thank Anthony for his passion and his impact, and congratulate him on his new role.”
“Working at Twitter has been a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I am immensely proud of our team and the key milestones we achieved during my time at the company,” said Noto. “It has been an honor to work alongside Jack and contribute to the success of one of the most impactful platforms in the world. While it’s bittersweet to depart, I have the utmost confidence in Twitter’s future and look forward to watching the wonderful success the team will continue to achieve.”
SoFi gains traction
The San Francisco startup SoFi was founded in April 2011 with the objective to offer a modern range of lending and wealth management services. The brand name is short for Social Finance (SoFi), and they primarily cater early-stage professionals with financial services such as various loans and mortgage refinancing.
Since the founding, they have received a total funding amount of more than $2.2B in a series of investments and debt coverage by investors such as Silver Lake Partners, SoftBank, Third Point Ventures, Discovery Capital, Morgan Stanley and others. Last year they even managed to acquire Zenbanx to gain their mobile multi-currency account solution for $100M.
“We are simply thrilled to have found someone of Anthony’s expertise and knowledge to lead SoFi,” Tom Hutton said. “The SoFi board unanimously agrees that Anthony’s deep understanding of technology, consumer, and financial businesses make him the perfect fit to be SoFi’s CEO. We could not be more excited to have someone of his caliber on board.”
“I’m grateful to the SoFi board for this extraordinary opportunity to lead one of the most important new companies at the intersection of technology and finance,” Noto said. “SoFi has a significant opportunity to build on its leadership position in student and personal loans to revolutionize consumer finance and build a next-generation financial services company. I’m excited to work with Tom and the rest of the SoFi team.”
Photo credit: Twitter / TechCrunch
Source: Twitter press release / SoFi press release / Crunchbase / Wayne Duggan (U.S. News)
Editorial notice: Quotes have been provided as part of a public press release.
