Business & Tech
Kirkwood Dentist's Son Named CFO of Online Gaming Giant
David Wehner was named the Chief Financial Officer of the online gaming giant Zynga ahead of the company's scheduled initial public offering in November. The company develops popular games played on Facebook including Farm Ville.
St. Louis Priory School graduate (class of 1986) David Wehner was named CFO of San Francisco based social network game developer Zynga in July.
Zynga develops some of the most popular game applications used on Facebook including Farm Ville, City Ville, Mafia Wars, and Empires & Allies.
Farm Ville, with more than 61 million monthly users, is Zynga’s most popular game. The company was founded in 2007, has more than 2,000 employees, and according to The Wall Street Journal is valued at between $15 billion and $20 billion.
Wehner, a Ladue native, grew up in the Forest Green Subdivision close by Old Warson Country Club. After graduating from Priory Wehner earned a BS in Chemistry from Georgetown University and an MS in Applied Physics from Stanford University where he was a National Science Foundation fellow.
His father Jim Wehner, D.D.S. has had a longtime dental practice in Kirkwood that he says he will be retiring from at the end of the year to spend more time with his wife Patricia.
The Wehner hire has been seen as a move by Zynga founder Mark Pincus to shore up his executive team prior to a scheduled initial public offering November 24 which is expected to raise $1 billion..
Wehner was most recently managing director at Allen & Company LLC, an investment bank focused on media and technology based in New York City. He led corporate finance teams responsible for capital raises and mergers and acquisitions transactions with a focus on the firm’s Silicon Valley clients.
He has represented social networking site Bebo in their $850 million sale to AOL in 2008, online search engine Powerset in their $100 million sale to Microsoft in 2008, and online ticket broker StubHub in their $310 million sale to eBay in 2007.