Vinyl Group shakes up leadership structure after buying Val Morgan publishing operation

Nathan Jolly

April 14, 2026 9:42

Vinyl Group shakes up leadership structure after buying Val Morgan publishing operation

Oake replaces Joel King as Vinyl's COO

Vinyl Group has appointed a new chief operating officer, chief financial officer, and chief integration officer, following the completion of its Val Morgan Digital takeover.

Jonathon Oake joins the company as chief operating officer. He worked at Tiktok parent Bytedance for five years, serving as global head of publishing operations and solutions. Prior to this, Oake was director of strategy, partnerships, and revenue at Optus for four years, and head of content strategy at Foxtel for a further five years.

Oake replaces Joel King who departed Vinyl Group last year.

Read Tim Burrowes’ analysis of Vinyl’s results and its failure to break even by the end of 2025

At Vinyl Group, Oake will be “responsible for group-wide operational execution, performance frameworks, systems and process optimisation, and translating board-approved strategy into scalable commercial outcomes across the expanded Vinyl Group portfolio”, according to an ASX filing announcing the personnel changes.

Michael Globan also joins Vinyl as chief financial officer. He recently served as financial director at Warner Music Group London’s label services division WMX, and has previously held senior finance roles at Dentsu and Ernst and Young.

Vinyl’s current chief financial officer Jorge Nigaglioni has been moved into the role of chief integration officer, to lead “post-acquisition integration” at the company.

Nigaglioni will be responsible for “operational alignment, systems consolidation, synergy realisation and ensuring disciplined execution of integration milestones across newly acquired businesses.”

Vinyl Group CEO Josh Simons, said in the announcement: “The completion of the Val Morgan Digital acquisition represents a significant step change in scale for Vinyl Group. These appointments ensure we have the operational, integration and financial leadership capability required to execute at that scale.”

Vinyl is the local licensee of Rolling Stone, Variety, and Refinery29, and owner of Media Week, The Brag, and Concrete Playground. It describes itself as “an adaptive media company”.

Yesterday the group recently completed the acquisition of Val Morgan Digital — the local publisher of Buzzfeed, Ladbible, PopSugar, Thrillist, and Fandom — for $10.5m in cash and shares.

At the time of purchase, Simons warned there would be redundancies across the company. Late last month, the company axed two of its most senior commercial leaders, Batoul Peters and Jack Castles. Linda Jenkinson has also resigned from the board.

Its most recent financial results, for the first half of FY26, saw the company post a net loss of $3.1m from revenue of $11.4m.

Wisetech founder and billionaire Richard White is Vinyl’s biggest shareholder.

In a further announcement to the ASX today, Vinyl confessed that it had failed to inform the market that it yesterday issued 1.8m new shares “for corporate advisory services relating to the Val Morgan Digital acquisition”. The update did not disclose who received the shares