By Jaspreet Singh
(Reuters) -Elon Musk’s X Corp has tapped former Tubi executive Mahmoud Reza Banki as chief financial officer, in one of the social media platform’s biggest hires as its billionaire owner shifts focus to a role aimed at making the government more efficient.
Banki has joined X in November, according to his LinkedIn page. He was the finance chief at streaming platform Tubi where he worked for six years from 2017.
X and Banki did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
X has been trying to attract advertisers amid growing competition for ad dollars from social media firms including Facebook-parent Meta Platforms.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday named Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy as co-lead of a newly created Department of Government Efficiency.
Trump had pardoned Banki in January 2021 in a case in which he was found guilty of making false statements in 2010.
“(The appointment) indicates that Musk may be stepping to the side when it comes to X’s business operations, but he certainly isn’t stepping entirely away, considering how vital X has been to proliferating his political agenda and securing a role in the upcoming administration,” Emarketer VP Jasmine Enberg said.
“Banki’s background at Tubi could also signal a growing focus on video on X,” she said.
Last year, Musk hired former NBCUniversal advertising chief Linda Yaccarino as the social media company’s new CEO, as the company tried to reverse a plunge in ad revenue.
“He (Musk) has an opportunity to get the business back to the value he acquired it for,” D.A. Davidson & Co analyst Gil Luria said.
The social media company went through a drastic change under Musk and ad revenue slumped for months after the billionaire entrepreneur bought the company in 2022.
X’s app had 317 global monthly active users as of October, down 24% from the same period in 2022, according market intelligence firm Sensor Tower.
The Wall Street Journal first reported Banki’s appointment on Wednesday.
(Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)
