Twitter COO Ali Rowghani Resigns, To Eliminate Position

(RTTNews) - Social media giant Twitter, Inc. (TWTR), which went public in November 2013, revealed in a regulatory filling on Thursday that its Chief Operating Officer Ali Rowghani has resigned from his position, effective today. The company added that Rowghani will continue as an employee and act as a strategic advisor to the CEO Dick Costolo.

Rowghani tweeted on his Twitter page, "Goodbye Twitter. It's been an amazing ride, and I will cherish the memories."

Meanwhile, Costolo wrote on his page, "Thank you for being an incredible executive & partner. Twitter could not have succeeded without you."

In its form 8-K filing with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the micro-blogging website said it would not hire a replacement and will eliminate the COO position.

San Francisco, California-based Twitter noted that the other members of the Twitter management will assume all of Rowghani's operating responsibilities.

Rowghani has served as Twitter's COO since December 2012 after serving as its chief financial officer from March 2010 to December 2012.

Prior to joining Twitter, Rowghani served in several roles at Pixar Animation Studios, Inc., a computer animation film studio, including being its CFO and senior vice president of strategic planning from June 2002 to March 2010.

Twitter has not revealed the reason for Rowghani's resignation. The Wall Street Journal reported that he was seen to be a very close aide of Costolo, and was even nicknamed Co-CEO by employees due to his stature and influence in the company.

This is the third high-profile resignation in 2014 after Twitter's Senior Vice President of Engineering Christopher Fry resigned last month and Vice President of Consumer Products Michael Sippey resigned in January. Fry also took an advisory role with the company.

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

Rowghani's resignation was seen to be coming as he had recently sold 300,000 shares of his Twitter stake in a hurry following the expiry of a lock-in period for a profit of about $9.9 million, even as the stock price was near a all-time low.

In Thursday's regular trading session, TWTR is currently trading at $36.97, up $1.43 or 4.01% on a volume of 15.61 million shares.