GameStop has let Chief Financial Officer Mike Recupero go, according to the company press release on Thursday (July 7), with more cuts expected across various departments.
Recupero only joined the company around a year ago. According to an anonymous source, he was fired by Chairman Ryan Cohen because he was “not the right culture” for the company and had been “too hands off.”
The company’s current chief accounting officer, Diana Jajeh, will be taking on the CFO role. Layoffs are reportedly being conducted on the corporate side of the company and not at the stores, according to the source, as GameStop looks to cut down on bloat.
All of it comes as GameStop is in a transition period as a company, trying to adapt to the digital world as well as a video game environment that has mostly moved online.
Cohen, who founded eCommerce firm Chewy, has been leading the turnaround since last year when he was hired for the job.
While GameStop made headlines early in 2021 as the meme stock trend around the company took off like a rocket, the company had kept its cards close to the vest, not giving many updates on its overall corporate strategy.
PYMNTS wrote that GameStop has been working on entering the world of cryptocurrency, blockchain and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), as its first quarter earnings showed it had been making hires and plans for that space.
See also: GameStop Doubles Down on Digital Assets, Blockchain, NFTs
The retailer said it had taken “steps to support the recent launch of a digital asset wallet to allow gamers and others to store, send, receive and use cryptocurrencies and [NFTs] across decentralized apps” in the quarter.
The company’s wallet will work toward letting transactions happen on the company’s NFT market, slated to roll out at some point in the second quarter. The company was also hiring people with experience with blockchain gaming, eCommerce and tech and operations.
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