Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Turbine taps Paradowski as CFO

By Mass High Tech staff

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Online role-playing game developer Turbine Inc. reports it has named M. Beau Paradowski as chief financial officer. Paradowski will replace Peter Faubert, who will remain with Westwood-based Turbine.

Paradowski most recently served as CFO at Optasite Inc. of Westborough, through its sale to SBA Communications Corp. for $430 million in July of 2008. Previously, Paradowski also served as CFO for Clearwire Technologies of Dallas, leading its sale to Craig McCaw in 2003. Prior to that, he held various positions at Clear Channel Media, Marcus Cable Co. and PriceWaterhouseCoopers. 

Turbine has been making a number of executive moves lately. At the beginning of the year, former vice president of business development Robert Ferrari left the company to become the point person behind Sanrio Digital’s move into the United States with its Hello Kitty Online game as the Hong Kong-based company’s vice president of business development and publishing, based in Boston. Ferrari had served as VP of business development for Turbine since 2004.

Last month Turbine announced its new vice president of corporate and business development, Nate Jones. Prior to joining Turbine, Jones had been vice president of strategy and corporate development at Glu Mobile Inc., a publicly traded mobile game publisher.

In December, Turbine cut staff levels at both its Westwood headquarters and its California studios. In early October, Turbine opened that West Coast studio in Redwood City, Calif., with former Flagship Studios co-founder Dave Brevik as creative director, Jeff Lind from Ping0 as engineering director and Matt McKnight of Sniper Studios as studio director.

Later in the same month, Turbine announced it had leased new space in Dedham, and at the time, the company said it was hiring.

In April of last year, Turbine landed $40 million in a third round of venture capital funding. Granite Global Ventures led the Series C financing, which included previous investors Highland Capital Partners, Polaris Venture Partners, Tudor Ventures and Columbia Capital. Granite Global managing partner Hani Nada took a seat on the Turbine board.

Turbine, which makes the games Lord of the Rings Online, Asheron’s Call and Dungeons and Dragons Online, has raised a total of $88 million in venture financing.