GameStop COO ditches post just months after appointment

GameStop lost an executive after Jenna Owens, its chief operating officer, stepped down from her post. It was reported that she left just seven months after joining the company and being appointed as its COO.

As per CNN Business, while GameStop confirmed in a regulatory filing that Owens is leaving, it did not state any reason why she quit. The publication tried to contact the former COO, but she could not be reached, while GameStop did not respond to a request for comment.

Then again, based on the filing, both GameStop and Owens agreed on the separation that was said to have gone into effect on Oct. 25. As she part ways with the American video game, consumer electronics, and gaming merchandise retailer, she will be receiving six months of base pay and the remaining amount of her sign-on bonus, and these are all part of her severance.

For now, the work she left behind will be distributed to other senior members of the management team. GameStop hired Owens last spring, and prior to that, she worked for Amazon and Google as one of their executives. When she was recruited, the ex-COO was expected to lead operations at the company while it tried to leverage this year’s retail investor stock market momentum into e-commerce transformation.

Likewise, GameStop hired people to help transform the company into an e-commerce retailer, but it seems the plan is not going smoothly. Reuters noted that Jenna Owens is the first major executive to leave the company since it started to work towards its goal of becoming an e-commerce powerhouse. This is also the first departure at GameStop since Matt Furlong was appointed as the new chief executive officer in June.

While the company did not say the reason for Owen’s departure, observers pointed out that the separation agreement that she and GameStop signed is usually negotiated when a firm and its executive do not have the same opinion or point of view.

Meanwhile, it was mentioned that Grapevine, Texas-headquartered company also signed separation agreements when its chief financial officer, Jim Bell, and chief executive officer, George Sherman, both left the company earlier this year.