Twitter Loses Another Key Executive

The shakeup was reported Wednesday night at Re/code. Rowghani joined Twitter in 2010 as chief financial officer and was promoted to COO in 2012. How long he remains in his new role could probably be measured in weeks, not months.

This is the third, and arguably the most surprising, of recent top management changes at Twitter. Former vice-president of consumer product, Michael Sippey, took an advisory role in January, and Twitter’s senior vice-president of engineering, Chris Fry, stepped down a few weeks ago.

Sippey’s replacement, Daniel Graf, joined the company in April as vice-president of consumer product, but he did not report to Rowghani, instead reporting directly to CEO Dick Costolo. Sippey, who once reported to Costolo, was reporting to Rowghani at the time Sippey resigned.

Rowghani’s sale of 300,000 shares of Twitter stock at profit of nearly $10 million also rubbed some of the company’s staff the wrong way. The sale came at a time when the shares were already under pressure and dropping steadily. The company’s founders and the CEO had pledged not to sell as a demonstration of confidence, but Rowghani took a different course.

Twitter shares were down about 0.4% shortly after the market opened Thursday morning but made a comeback, up about more than 1% to $35.90 shortly thereafter.

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