Cupid chief executive to stand down

The chief executive of online dating company Cupid is to step down from his role within a week. Bill Dobbie is to leave his role after the company was involved in a BBC investigation into its practices at the start of the year.

The Edinburgh-based dating company that floated on the alternative investment market as recently as June 2010 has seen the value of its shares collapse by 70pc in the year to date.

A BBC investigation into the online dating group found users of the websites who said they received lots of messages from prospective dates when they first signed up for service for free.

But when they paid a subscription to the service, interest in their profile fell rapidly.

Cupid refuted claims that it was creating user profiles on its websites to entice new customers to sign up or that the company sent messages in order to tempt free members to pay subscriptions.

An independent review carried out into the dating sites' practices found that: “It is not the Group's practice to create 'fake profiles' to encourage customers to sign up.

“However, Cupid staff operating on the sites were not clearly identified as such and that this could potentially lead to confusion,” said the dating company.

The dating group sold its casual dating platforms Benaughty.com and Flirt.com for £45.1m in July.

Mr Dobbie, who retains a 21pc stake in the company, will remain on the dating site company’s board as a non-executive director. He will be replaced by Phil Gripton who was previously the managing director of dating services at the Group.

The company’s shares traded as highly as 200p at the start of this year, they have since fallen to 57.1p today.