Twitter names Hugh Johnston and Martha Lane Fox as board members

Twitter Inc named PepsiCo Inc Chief Financial Officer Hugh Johnston and Martha Lane Fox, co-founder of travel website lastminute.com, to its board on Friday in its latest management shakeup.

The appointments, which take effect immediately, came as board members Peter Currie and Peter Chernin decided not to stand for re-election, Twitter said in a regulatory filing. The terms of Currie, the president of a private investment firm, and Chernin, a Hollywood executive, are set to expire at the company’s annual meeting in May.

Twitter Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey tweeted that other directors would be appointed soon, “ones that will bring diversity and represent the strong communities on Twitter. This matters & is a must.”

Twitter has tried to freshen its board since January as it has been criticized for lacking diversity and innovative ideas. Many of its 10 board members have served for several years.

“You need greater turnover than just these two and ideally bring in some media figures,” said Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co analyst James Cakmak. “Almost everybody needs to turn over, and these two are just a start.”

Shares of Twitter were down 2.5 percent in early afternoon trading.

The microblogging site has faced myriad problems over the past year, including a prolonged CEO search before it appointed Dorsey permanently in October. In January, four top executives left the company shortly before it reported quarterly earnings in February, when it said it had no growth in users for the first time since it went public.

Johnston, 54, has been the CFO at PepsiCo since March 2010, while Lane Fox, 43, is chairwoman of doteveryone.org.uk, an organization she founded that promotes the understanding and use of Internet-enabled technologies. She is also a member of the UK House of Lords.

Source: Reuters