Online DVD rental company Netflix Inc. has appointed A. George Battle, chairman of the board of Ask Jeeves Inc., and Greg Stanger, a venture partner at Technology Crossover Ventures, to its board of directors. The appointments increase the number of Netflix directors to eight.
Battle is executive chairman of the board of Ask Jeeves, Inc., which operates the search engine, AskJeeves.com, and which announced in March an agreement to be acquired by IAC/InterActiveCorp. He was CEO of Ask Jeeves from 2000 to 2003. From 1968 until his retirement in 1995, Battle served in management roles at Arthur Andersen LLP and then Andersen Consulting LLP, where he became worldwide managing partner of market development and a member of the firm's executive committee. He is also chairman of the board of Fair, Isaac and Co. and previously was a director of PeopleSoft Inc. and of Barra Inc.
Before joining Technology Crossover Ventures, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm in 2003, Stanger was CFO and a director of online travel agency Expedia Inc. He led the company's successful IPO in 1999, the 2002 sale of Microsoft's majority interest in the company to USA Networks and the sale of the remaining public shares to USA's successor, InterActiveCorp, in a transaction that valued the company at more than $9 billion. Stanger has also held a senior role in corporate development at Microsoft Corp. and was an investment banker at PaineWebber. He is also a director of Drugstore.com and of comparison-shopping site NexTag Inc.
Netflix is the 18th largest online retailer, according to Internet Retailer's Top 400 Guide to Retail Web Sites.
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