Twitter Names Goldman Executive Anthony Noto To Succeed Mike Gupta As CFO

(RTTNews) - Social media giant Twitter, Inc. (TWTR), which went public in November 2013, revealed in a regulatory filling on Tuesday that Goldman Sachs Executive Anthony Noto will take over as the new chief financial officer, effective no later than September 1, 2014.

In a form 8-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the micro-blogging website noted that Noto will succeed Mike Gupta, who will take on the role of senior vice president of strategic investments at Twitter within the next 30 days.

Noto, age 46, was most recently serving as the managing director in the Technology, Media and Telecom Investment Banking Group at Goldman, Sachs & Co. (GS) from October 2010 to June 2014. Prior to that, he served as co-head of Goldman's global telecommunications, media and technology investment banking group from September 2011 to May 2014.

During that period, Noto had assisted in last year's highly anticipated $2.1 billion Twitter IPO as Goldman Sachs was the lead underwriter for the offering.. Twitter ended its first day of trading with a market capitalization of about $25 billion. He helped establish Goldman Sachs as a major player in the technology sector.

From February 2008 to September 2010, Noto served as the CFO of the National Football League. Previously, Noto also served in various roles at Goldman Sachs From May 1999 to January 2008.

San Francisco, California-based Twitter said its will pay a gross starting salary at an annualized rate of $250,000, as well as equity compensation of 1.5 million in shares of Twitter vesting over 4 years and the option to buy 500,000 shares. He will report directly to CEO Dick Costolo.

Meanwhile, Gupta has been serving as CFO of Twitter since December 2012, a month after he joined in November 2012 from Zynga Inc., where he served was senior vice president of finance and treasurer.

Prior to that, Gupta spent eight years at Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO) in a variety of financial roles, most recently as senior vice president of corporate development, finance and treasury. Previously in his career, he was vice president in the investment banking division of Merrill Lynch & Co. and a senior auditor and C.P.A. at KPMG.

This is the fourth high-profile management shift in 2014, coming less than a month after Chief Operating Officer Ali Rowghani stepped down from his role, and the company also eliminated the position.

Earlier, Twitter's Senior Vice President of Engineering Christopher Fry resigned in May and Vice President of Consumer Products Michael Sippey resigned in January. Fry and Rowghani then took an advisory role with the company.

Prior to that, Twitter's general counsel Alexander Macgillivray also left the company in August 2013 and was replaced by Vijaya Gadde.

In Tuesday's regular trading session, TWTR is currently trading at $42.84, up $1.87 or 4.56% on a volume of 17.56 million shares.