Fairfax Digital has lost finance director, Nimesh Shah a seven year veteran of Fairfax, to social networking giant Friendster.
Shah is joining Friendster’s new Sydney based operations later this month as chief financial officer. The pivotal new regional base is being helmed by global CEO Richard Kimber and is part of an Asia Pacific wide expansion drive which includes the opening of an office in Singapore and increase in head count across Asia Pac.
In an internal memo to staff Fairfax Digital CEO Jack Matthews said that while the company was disappointed by Shah’s departure, his move was commended as “a great new opportunity” adding on a personal note, that Shah was “a great pleasure to work with and has been the source of much valuable advice to me.” Shah joined started his Fairfax career as a Senior Management Accountant, moving to a Finance Manager role with Herald Publications, Group Magazines , Corporate services and Group Operations -Circulation. He joined Fairfax Digital in March 2006 as finance director and has been an integral part of the executive leadership team. Shah was also a key player in integrating acquisitions and assessing potential opportunities for Fairfax Digital over the last there years.
Friendster is heavily investing in growth opportunities in the Asia Pacific markets including growth by acquisition, with a strong focus in the area of mobility. Kimber, revealed to Digital Media that he was half way through the recruitment process for a team of around 12 senior executive staff across marketing, sales and business development areas. While it is still being determined whether Sydney will be the regional HQ for the social networking giant, all the executive functions will be performed from the new base with the Californian global HQ focused on engineering and product development. Mobility is high on Kimber’s agenda for accelerating growth in the year ahead and revealed that he was currently talking to a number of local and international mobile application and technology developers to partner and perhaps acquire. “We are looking for companies that have good technologies for mobile applications. Particularly those that can enhance the user experience and are focussed in the areas of gaming and entertainment.” He added that most of Friendster’s technology and marketing development will be concentrated on mobile. “It’s one of the biggest areas of focus and we will also be developing our mobile advertising platform.” Friendster has over 1 million online only registered subscribers and will be aggressively targeting growth in that area across the region.
