Google’s CFO Becomes Twitter’s Independent Director

Twitter has appointed Patrick Pichette as its independent director to replace Omid Kordestani, who left office on June 1^t.

Pichette used to be Google’s CFO and a partner of a venture capital firm named Inovia Capital. Pichette joined Twitter’s board of directors as an independent director in December, 2018. Kordestani remains as a Twitter’s director after he left office.

At the beginning of 2020, an active investor named Elliott and his firm Management Corporation bought in a portion of stocks from Twitter, challenging Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey with the intention of replacing him. During Elliott’s meetings with other managers of Twitter, Elliott proposed a series of ideas and plans to improve Twitter’s corporate governance, including the establishment of independent directors. Pichette has now become Twitter’s first independent director.

Elliott also hopes to reshuffle Twitter’s board of directors by creating a new election system, which is to conduct annual re-elections. Everything Elliott has done, including the replacement of Dorsey, has the intention of improving Twitter by consolidating leadership. Twitter’s share price plunged last year after a series of strategic mistakes, and what Elliott is hoping to see is that the company’s state can be more positive by enhancing its operational efficiency and supervision ability.

Twitter has compromised and agreed to add three new directors and set up a new committee that will focus on assessing leadership, succession and administration issues.

It is estimated that by the end of this year, the committee members will put forward their suggestions for the further development of the company. Twitter has already invited Jesse Cohn, Elliott’s U.S. director, and Egon Durban, co-CEO of Silver Lake, to the board. On May 12, 2020, Twitter announced the appointment of Dr. Li Feifei, Google Cloud’s AI/ML Consultant, as the new independent director of Twitter’s board of directors, and took effect immediately.