Last month I reported on the new executive team taking over at Prosper. Things continue to evolve there as demonstrated last week by this short 8-K regulatory filing from Prosper where two senior executives announced their resignations.
The fact that Joseph Toms, the Chief Investment Officer, resigned was not a surprise to me. I have spoken regularly with Joe over the last couple of years and even reported on his switch from Lending Club to Prosper back in 2011. Last year he produced a monthly article series that was some of the most intelligent analysis of the p2p space I have read. But I also know he was deeply involved with institutional sales and that is a real strong suit for the new executive team.
The other resignation was that of Kirk Inglis who was the Chief Operating Officer and former CFO. He had been at Prosper since 2006 and I was a little surprised to see him leave. He is one of the old guard of this industry, being the longest tenured executive at either Lending Club or Prosper. But with Aaron Vermut becoming the new president there was probably going to be a lot of crossover between his role as the COO role. Still, a wealth of p2p lending experience leaves with Kirk Inglis.
Also reported in the filing was the resignation of Sachin Adarkar from Prosper Funding LLC. He is Prosper’s general counsel and was instrumental in putting the bankruptcy remote vehicle in place. He will be staying on in his role at Prosper, he will just no longer be a director at Prosper Funding.
I am not sure we can read too much into these resignations. When new management teams take over companies there is always some fall out. Personally, I am a little disappointed because I had good relationships with both departing executives. But the new team are obviously intent on bringing in fresh faces with new ideas. Now, they just have to start putting some runs on the board.
I too am disappointed to hear about Kirk’s departure. He was my (last remaining) “go to” guy at the top from the old guard when I had an issue that wasn’t addressed properly by the lower level support, one call or email to him and everything was resolved quickly.
He will be missed.
Agreed. So far, though, I have found the new leadership to be VERY responsive. My emails are responded to within an hour.
I really hope Prosper rights the ship and finds it’s way. Having only one P2P lender wouldn’t be a good thing.
As I said in my article Prosper is in a transition period right now and some of these departures were bound to happen, they may even have been expected by the new management team.
With $20 million in the bank and an energized executive they are not in any danger of going away – I certainly didn’t mean to imply that with my article.
Thanks for the update. I’ll be keeping a close eye on this.
I guess it’s inevitable with a new team.