SolarCity’s President is leaving after restructuring the executive team ahead of merger with Tesla

Last month, a few weeks after SolarCity’s board officially accepted to bring to a shareholders vote the acquisition offer from Tesla, the solar installer announced some restructuring in the form of layoffs and pay cuts for the co-founders, Lyndon Rive and Peter Rive.

Today, SolarCity followed its restructuring at the executive level ahead of the merger. President and Chief Operating Officer Tanguy Serra will be leaving the company and Executive Vice President of Global Capital Markets, Radford Small, has been promoted to the role of Chief Financial Officer.

Prior to joining SolarCity, Serra was the CEO of Vivint Solar, the company’s largest competitor. He joined SolarCity as COO in 2013, but he was promoted to President in 2015 and oversaw finance as part of his responsibilities.

SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive linked Serra’s departure to the “anticipated acquisition of the company by Tesla”:

“Tanguy has played a pivotal role in helping SolarCity achieve the lowest operations costs in the solar industry. He is extremely talented, but due to overlap at the new company, he is going to pursue a new venture. I’m grateful for everything Tanguy has contributed to SolarCity.”

He will remain at SolarCity until the end of the year.

The new top role in finance will go to Radford Small, who until now was Executive Vice President of Global Capital Markets. Prior to joining SolarCity last year, Small had a 17-year career Goldman, Sachs & Co where he most recently was a Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer for the Clean Technology and Renewables group.

Rive commented on his appointment as CFO:

“Rad has been a tremendous asset—he’s excelled at everything we’ve put on his plate—and he brings an incredibly valuable skillset to a potential combination of Tesla and SolarCity. This promotion largely reflects the reality of the current roles and responsibilities in SolarCity’s finance department. Rad has been leading our efforts in the capital markets for some time, and has been playing an increasingly visible role in financial planning and analysis, investor relations and accounting.”

Earlier this month, we learned that Tesla is fighting 4 different lawsuits from stockholders over the SolarCity merger, which could affect the timeline of the acquisition. Unless one of the lawsuits is successful, the merger is expected to go to shareholders votes at Tesla and SolarCity by the end of October.

Under the new company, Tesla is expected to unveil new products utilizing the synergy between each company at the end of the month.