Zynga juggles leadership team as CFO departs for Facebook

Zynga today announced some changes to its senior management team, including the departure of chief financial officer David Wehner for an executive post at Facebook.

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Mark Pincus (pictured), the chief executive of the social gaming giant, reorganized the management team in a way that centralizes the command structure and fills gaps left through various departures. David Ko, formerly the head of mobile, is now the chief operations officer. His goal is to help Zynga, whose games include social titles such as FarmVille 2 and CityVille 2, get its mojo back.

This COO position is different from that of John Schappert, who resigned as chief operating officer, for a reason. Schappert was the No. 2 executive with responsibility for most of the company’s operations. But Pincus also promoted Barry Cottle, formerly the executive vice president of business and corporate development, to the post of chief revenue officer. He’ll assume some of the duties that Schappert handled, while Ko will also share some of those duties.

In other changes, Steven Chiang is the new president of games. Mark Vranesh, formerly the chief accounting officer, will replace Wehner as chief financial officer. Vranesh, who has been with the company since 2008 and served as its chief financial officer before, will also remain chief accounting officer.

Wehner will take a senior finance job at Facebook. Pincus explained the changes in a blog post.

“Dave remains a good friend to us all and we wish him success in his next role,” said Pincus. “Mark, David, Barry, and Steve are rooted in our culture, committed to our future, and part of the talented bench of leadership at Zynga. I’m confident we have the right team to deliver on our mission of connecting the world through games and position us for long-term growth.”

“I have greatly enjoyed working closely with Mark Pincus and the rest of the team,” Wehner said. “The time I spent at Zynga has been an exciting chapter in my career as we led the rapid development of social gaming.  Mark Vranesh and I have been close partners during my tenure at Zynga and I wish my colleagues well as the company continues to deliver on its vision.”

Ko will oversee strategy planning, international, infrastructure, and operations. Since joining the company in 2010, Ko (formerly of Yahoo) helped expand Zynga’s mobile organization, launching 25 new games. Cottle previously served as executive vice president of EA Interactive at Electronic Arts. There, he headed a mobile team that was big as Zynga’s 3,000 employees. Chiang has been making games for 20 years and also was a senior executive in charge of EA Sports at EA.

Zynga also said it was reaffirming financial guidance from its last analyst call.

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