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Bloomberg Names Zynga's Pincus To "Worst CEOs" List

The respected business news organization has published its list of the worst CEOs of 2012, and Zynga's Marc Pincus makes the cut.

This year has been a tough one for Cityville publisher Zynga, which has suffered plummeting stock prices, layoffs and cancellations of games, and accusations of insider trading. For these reasons, and others detailed in Bloomberg's story, Zynga's Marc Pincus was named the fourth-worst CEO of 2012.

The list was compiled by Shelly Finkelstein, a professor at Dartmouth's prestigious Tuck School of Business. Of Pincus, Finkelstein says, "[Pincus] made some rookie mistakes, including hitching his company’s wagon much too securely to Facebook (FB), which Zynga relies on for a big chunk of revenue. And he hardly expressed confidence in the company’s prospects with his move to unload 16 million shares after the IPO lockup period ended."

Other CEOs on the list include former Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn, who left the ailing electronics retailer amid allegations of of an "inappropriate relationship" with a younger Best Buy employee, and Avon's Andrea Jung.

Source: Bloomberg via Gamespot

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Comments
  • lol! and he deserves it! good job, Bloomberg!

  • Bloomberg's respected?
  • Shelly Finklestein? Sounds like a Frakenstein reference (Written by Mary Shelly, right?).
  • Brian Dunn knows what's up, BB always has the most attractive, yet vapid, female employees. When I worked there, I swear the managers just went by blonde hair and measurements.

    Which actually is horrible when you're working in computers or media and need to know the product. No, I am not all girls are incapable, and I'm not targeting blondes, I had a great partner on the sales floor. In fact, even a lot of their collegiate males were pretty idiotic.

    I'm just saying it's my experience as an employee and customer across two countries and eight states that Best Buy managers seem to go for looks over substance even worse than The Gap does. Why slam The Gap? Go read their employee manual, especially "Appearance".
  • I don't really like this guy, but I really like that picture of him.

  • It looks like his head was Photoshopped onto that body.

  • His face in this shot just screams "u mad?".
  • I dunno how I feel about this. It is good that videogames have come such a way that the industry is able to create screw-ups of such notoriety like Zynga..... .....but Zynga itself, and the drama behind it, does nothing to change the perception that videogames as a whole is a societal cesspool of morons, miscreants, and misanthropes.
  • As a shareholder of Zynga's, I can confirm this.

  • HA! Nice job Bloomberg.

  • Great job Bloomberg.

  • Here's an idea: Let's make a game, give it to everyone for free, and wait for the millions to pour in. I think you got your business model from early internet sites Bloomberg. Great job!

  • CEOs are the disease!
  • This picture was taken a while back, but it fits the story. It's like he's shrugging a saying "whoops, you caught. I am a D-bag."

  • Sweet. Good on them for calling Zynga out.

  • d-bag picture of the year....

  • Hopefully a jail cell is calling his name.

    Too bad it's too cushy for these white-collar clowns.
  • Surely a well earned fourth place.

  • Zynga was destroyed by those who made the vile beast and much rejoicing was had by the villagers. Seriously though this proves that people don't want shovelware even if they don't know any better than to pay for it. Soon free to play will be like Guild Wars 2 and games will be better off for it.

  • Good for him!

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