Three days after promoting international president Michael Mauler to CEO, GameStop cut loose two other top-level executives.
Gone are COO and former president Tony Bartel, and Michael Hogan, who had served as strategic business and brand development executive VP.
No successors were named.
Bartel is a 17-year veteran of GameStop who held senior-level merchandising, marketing and international finance posts before serving as president from 2010-2015 and COO thereafter.
Hogan joined GameStop in 2008 as a senior VP with responsibility for marketing, strategy, e-commerce and pre-owned products.
GameStop indicated in a Securities & Exchange Commission filing that the terminations were without cause and that the two would receive full payouts and benefits as stipulated by their contracts.
Their departures follow that of former CEO Paul Raines, who had been on medical leave since November for treatment of a reoccurring brain tumor. He resigned from the board on Jan. 31 “in order to focus on his health and his family,” and will formally leave the company in March.
Raines was instrumental in diversifying GameStop’s retail portfolio into cellular, collectibles and Apple product stores as direct videogame downloads ate into sales at its thousands of flagship locations.
See: GameStop Looks To Life Beyond The Joystick
His successor, Mauler, is a 16-year-veteran of the company who came aboard with the 2005 acquisition of Electronics Boutique, a rival video gaming chain where he served as logistics VP.
GameStop, the No. 1 gaming specialty chain, posted a 17 percent increase in net earnings to $59.4 million for the third quarter ended Oct. 28, 2017, its most recently reported period. Net sales edged up 1.5 percent to $2 billion, and comp sales rose 1.9 percent during the three months.
