Stalling Twitter beefs up board
SAN FRANCISCO• Twitter Inc. named Hugh Johnston and Martha Lane Fox to its board, adding a consumer products heavyweight and a British technology entrepreneur as it struggles to gain traction with a wider global audience.
It’s the latest in a series of major changes to the board, following the appointment last year of a former Google Inc. executive as chairman and the departure of the former CEO. Johnston, chief financial officer at Pepsi-Co Inc., was named to the audit committee, Twitter said in a regulatory filing Friday. Fox is a member of the U. K. House of Lords and the cofounder of Lastminute. com, a travel and leisure website.
Twitter plans to continue to bolster its board and executive team amid a slowdown in growth. The company added no new users in the fourth quarter, underscoring the urgency of making the service palatable to a wider audience than its foundation of journalists, celebrities and politicians.
“Turnover on the board was necessary — any development here is incrementally good news,” said James Cakmak, an analyst at Monness Crespi Hardt & Co. “You are bringing in the CFO of one of the biggest brand marketers in the world — there are definitely synergistic opportunities there. For Martha Fox, the international commerce experience certainly could help them think about ways they can increase conversion and possibly expand into new partnerships.”
For much of the company’s 10- year history, Twitter’s board has had an outsized and often dramatic role in its changes. At some point, the board has ousted every CEO — including Jack Dorsey, a co- founder who was also the company’s first CEO. Since Twitter’s 2013 initial public offering, the board has overseen turnover in the roles of the CEO, CFO, COO and heads of product and engineering.
Since its November 2013 IPO at US$26, Twitter shares lost 35 per cent through Thursday’s close.
The board was criticized by some last year for being slow to appoint a successor to Dick Costolo as CEO, before giving the job permanently to Dorsey, who was serving as interim CEO.
Fox, 43, brings insight from her experience as a U. K. tech entrepreneur and politician. She is the founder of Lucky Voice, a private karaoke company, has served since 2012 as the chairman of MakieLab, a 3D printing and game company, and has been the chairman since last September of Dot everyone. org. uk, an organization to advance the understanding and use of Internet- enabled technologies.
Johnston has worked at Purchase, N.Y.-based PepsiCo for nearly three decades. He may be a Twitter novice, but the maker of Doritos and Mountain Dew isn’t. Each of the company’s major brands have Twitter handles.