Big Fish Games, the Seattle-based casual game distributor, has named David Stephenson as chief financial officer. The veteran of Amazon.com and Procter & Gamble fills the role left vacant when Michael Vernon departed for fast-growing daily deal site Zulily in May.
“(Stephenson’s) demonstrated track record of leading operational finance teams focused on large and complex consumer markets aligns incredibly well with our business and our plans for extending our operations, brand and product offerings across multiple platforms and geographies,” said CEO Jeremy Lewis in a statement.
Stephenson spent eleven years at Amazon.com, most recently as vice president of finance for the company’s $15 billion North American Retail division. Before that, he spent nine years at Procter & Gamble where he focused on new business development.
The appointment comes amid some changing times in the casual games space, with Big Fish’s cross-town peer, PopCap Games, agreeing to be sold Electronic Arts for up to $1.3 billion. Interestingly, Big Fish is actually bigger than PopCap when it comes to annual revenue.
Could the CFO appointment signal that something is in the works for Big Fish?
Time will tell. Big Fish, the maker of the Hidden Expedition franchise, raised an $83 million round of financing just before the economic swoon hit in 2008. It was founded by former RealNetworks employee Paul Thelen in 2002.
