Cupid Chief Executive Bill Dobbie Steps Down

Ok Cupid

The chief executive of Cupid, Bill Dobbie, is to step down following a difficult year for the Edinburgh-based company.

Co-founder Dobbie will be replaced by Phil Gripton, who was previously managing director of dating services at Cupid.

This year the company was at the centre of a BBC investigation which accused Cupid of creating fake profiles in order to lure paying members back to the site.

A review by KPMG cleared the dating site of these allegations, but said that Cupid’s staff were not clearly identified, which may have led to some confusion.

In the first half of the year the dating firm recorded a loss of £2.8m, on the back of increased marketing and admin expenses.

They sold their casual dating sites, such as benaughty.com and flirt.com, to one of its co-founders, Max Polyakov, for £45.1m in July.

The company floated on the alternative investment market back in June 2010 and this year shares have dropped by 70%, from 200p in January to 57.1p on Monday morning.

Dobbie retains a 21% stake in the company and will remain on the board as a non-executive director.

New chief executive Phil Gripton was previously the managing director of dating services at Cupid.

Before this he was chief operating officer of digital marketing agency LBi.