Netflix’s Principal Accounting Officer Resigns After Three Months

Netflix’s recently hired principal accounting officer, former EA finance exec Ken Barker, has resigned after about three months on the job.

Barker, who reported to CFO Spencer Neumann, submitted his resignation on Thursday and will depart the company on Oct. 7, Netflix disclosed in an SEC filing. “Mr. Barker’s resignation was a personal decision and is not the result of any disagreement with the company on any matter relating to the company’s financials, operations, policies or practices,” Netflix said in the filing.

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With Barker’s exit, Neumann will assume the role of principal accounting officer (and he will not receive any additional compensation for those duties) while the company searches for a permanent replacement. Previously, the primary accounting exec at Netflix was JC Berger, VP of finance and global controller, who left the company in June after 15 years.

In recent months, Netflix has taken several measures to cut costs after seeing its subscriber base shrink slightly in the first half of 2022. The company has laid off around 500 staffers, including 30 employees in its animation group earlier this month. The streamer took a $70 million charge in Q2 related to layoffs, as well as an $80 million non-cash impairment charge for “certain real estate leases primarily related to rightsizing our office footprint.” Netflix lost 200,000 subs in Q1 and shed 970,000 in Q2 (although that was about 1 million fewer than it had previously forecast). The company expects to gain 1 million subscribers in the current quarter.

Barker, before his short-lived tenure at Netflix, had been a longtime executive at Electronic Arts, most recently as senior VP finance at the games company, and as SVP and chief accounting officer from June 2003 to August 2021. Prior to joining EA, Barker worked at Sun Microsystems as corporate controller and at Deloitte as an audit partner.

Neumann, who was previously CFO of games company Activision Blizzard and a former Disney finance exec, came on board as Netlfix’s CFO in January 2019.

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