Person
Finance executive who serves as Automattic's chief financial officer and sits on its board of directors.
Automattic put Matt Mullenweg on paid leave on Wednesday and made its CFO interim CEO. Two days later Mullenweg told staff on Slack that the board is back in agreement, and no board member has confirmed it.
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Matt Mullenweg has named four new Automattic directors weeks after the old board's leave vote against him lasted 33 hours and 20 minutes. He controls 84% of the voting power, so the people who oversee him are people he chose.
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The reciprocal deals, effective September 10, would cost Automattic $8.15 million now that Matt Mullenweg has fired both men. The company's new lawyers are deciding whether to pay out or contest the documents.
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Matt Mullenweg went on leave last Thursday and was back by Saturday, with CFO Mark Davies standing in between the two notices. The company timed the absence to the minute and has declined to explain what changed.
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A board resolution made Automattic's CFO interim chief executive on Wednesday. A spokesperson's sentence to TechCrunch on Saturday put Matt Mullenweg back in the title, and Automattic has not described what authority Mark Davies retains.
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Matt Mullenweg told Automattic's company-wide Announcements channel that the board is back in agreement and he is in control. By Friday the CFO named acting interim CEO no longer had a working Slack account.
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Automattic's directors put Matt Mullenweg on paid leave and handed the CEO job to their CFO. The plugin directory and the trademark that WordPress sites depend on are still his, held personally outside the company.
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Directors named the finance chief interim CEO on September 9 and left the open-source project's distribution servers under Mullenweg's personal control, while the WP Engine suit still names him alongside the company.
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