GameStop CEO Matt Furlong in an internal email sent to company employees on Thursday said Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Mike Recupero has been fired, with chief accounting officer Diana Jajeh taking his place. He said the gaming company is also making several cuts at the corporate level and will be implementing core restructuring across its business interests.
An insider who does not want to be mentioned by name said GameStop Chairman Ryan Cohen sacked Recupero because he did not fit it perfectly into the company’s culture and seemed too distant from its core operations. The former Amazon executive joined GameStop in 2021 as part of the more than 600 corporate hires the company made since last year.
Furlong said the gaming company has invested heavily in personnel, technology, inventory, and supply infrastructure in a bid to jumpstart its profitability. He said all employees will be accountable for their wages and must deploy an owner’s mentality to move the organization forward across all verticals.
“This means eliminating excess costs and operating with an intense owner’s mentality,” Furlong said. “Everyone in the organization must become even more hands-on and embrace a heightened level of accountability for results.”
According to him, GameStop will “right-size headcount across several corporate departments. Today, we’re making a number of reductions to help us keep things simple and operate nimbly with the right talent in place.” Although the CEO has not revealed the number of disengaged employees, it is evident the layoff is more prominent at the executive levels.
Furlong went on to add that the company will be boosting store leaders and field operatives because “these individuals are, in many respects, the heart of GameStop.” He further disclosed that the company will pursue growth in its online business and launch web3 gaming products that customers will find invaluable. He said this will position the company on the track for steady growth while it debuts e-commerce, blockchain gaming, and NFTs before the end of the second quarter.
In a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing, GameStop said Jajeh will be started off on $200,000 annual salary and will be in line to earn an aggregate of $1,965,000 in transformation bonus. The company has a market value of $10.29 billion as on Thursday, when its stocks traded at $135.12 per share.
