Business First reports that according to global outplacement consultant Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. of Chicago, September 2010 was a tumultuous month for CEOs as the turnover rate surged to a four-month high. September CEO departures were up 17 percent from August and 5.7 percent from the same month a year ago. John A. Challenger, […]
Business First reports that according to global outplacement consultant Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. of Chicago, September 2010 was a tumultuous month for CEOs as the turnover rate surged to a four-month high. September CEO departures were up 17 percent from August and 5.7 percent from the same month a year ago.
John A. Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, says several factors are contributing to the turnover rate, including
“a volatile economy, an aging CEO population, a brighter spotlight on the CEO position and calls for more accountability on the part of corporate leadership.”
The technology industry was not immune from shakeups. We’ve compiled a list of the movements of some of IT’s big names.
Click through for 11 recent CEO shakeups.
Mark Hurd was invited to leave the helm of Hewlett-Packard, and has been hired as co-president of Oracle and will report to Larry Ellison.
The move triggered a number of lawsuits. HP sued Hurd, claiming that his new position puts HP trade secrets and confidentiality agreements in jeopardy. In addition, numerous HP board members are facing a lawsuit from a private investor who claims the board essentially robbed shareholders by paying out a $40 million severance package to ex-CEO Mark Hurd. Another shareholder suit alleges mismanagement and breach of fiduciary duties.
Former SAP CEO Leo Apotheker has been named the new CEO of HP following Hurd’s departure. Apotheker stepped down as SAP’s CEO in February. He will receive an annual salary of $1.2 million, a signing bonus of $4 million and a $4.6 million relocation allowance.
IT Business Edge's Rob Enderle believes HP will quickly bulk up in software under Apotheker to do battle with Oracle and has much praise for HP's board for hiring him and new Chairman Ray Lane, a former Oracle executive.
Nokia ousted CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo and nabbed the head of Microsoft's business software unit, Stephen Elop. Elop will have his work cut out for him as Nokia struggles to keep up with the smartphone market.
Following Elop’s appointment, there were a number of personnel shakeups. Nokia's head of Mobile Solutions, Anssi Vanjoki resigned, then Chairman Jorma Ollila announced his departure. In still more changes, the handset maker hired Peter Skillman, the former head of design at Palm, to head the user experience and services division for MeeGo, Nokia’s Linux-based open source mobile operating system project.
CIO Insight reports that LG Electronics' CEO, Yong Nam, has resigned as the company's CEO. He will be replaced by Bon-joon Koo, who is currently the CEO of LG International.
LG recently announced a new series of smartphones that will be equipped with dual-core processors, greatly improving the performance and battery life of the handsets. The company has postponed its plan to launch a tablet based on Android 2.2 until January 2011.
According to The New York Times, Mozilla has appointed Gary Kovacs, currently senior vice president in charge of mobile products at SAP, as its new chief executive. Mozilla CEO John Lilly announced his plans to step down in May.
Kovacs’s move to Mozilla comes at a time when the company’s flagship product, Firefox, faces growing competition from Google’s Chrome, Apple’s Safari and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. In its first-quarter analyst report, Mozilla said that its Firefox browser captured 30 percent of the global browser market.
Evan Williams is giving Twitter's CEO title to Chief Operating Officer Dick Costolo. Williams will continue to be involved in "product strategy." Costolo does have experience heading up a company as he is the former CEO of Feedburner.
Gartner analyst Ray Valdes likes the switch up. Computerworld quotes him as saying:
“I think it is a good move for Twitter … Ev Williams' strength is in strategy and product, not so much in other areas such as operations and finance. Twitter needs to marshall all its resources in an optimal way in order to stay on its high-growth track.”
Former Cisco exec Tony Bates has been hired to take over the CEO position at Skype at the end of October, replacing CEO Josh Silverman, according to Computerworld.
The VoIP company recently filed plans for a $100 million initial public offering. In other recent news, Skype has embarked on a two-phase cooperative project with Avaya that will enable the equipment vendor’s customers to make inexpensive or free calls via Skype Connect. There are also reports that Skype and Facebook are on the verge of a deal.
ReiJane Huai abruptly resigned as FalconStor Software's president, CEO, and chairman amid allegations that “certain improper payments were allegedly made in connection with the Company's contract with one customer,” reports CRN. FalconStor's Board of Directors has named James McNiel, the company's chief strategy officer, as interim CEO and interim president.
Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's chief software architect, has announced he will be leaving the company, although an exact departure date has not been set. His position will not be filled.
Ozzie is considered one of technology’s great visionaries by Computerworld’s Preston Gralla, who notes that Ozzie worked on the first spreadsheet, wrote the Lotus Symphony office suite and developed Lotus Notes and Groove Virtual Office. While at Microsoft, he spearheaded the tech giant’s move into cloud computing, including building the plan for its Azure service.
According to LA News Monitor, Symbian Foundation executive director Lee Williams has stepped down for “personal reasons.” He will be replaced by Tim Holbrow, the foundation’s chief financial officer.
This is indeed a time of uncertainty for the foundation, as it has recently lost some of its biggest allies. Both Samsung and Sony Ericsson have discontinued support for the platform, leaving Nokia and Fujitsu as the last two major companies producing Symbian-based handsets.
Former Oracle co-president Charles E. Phillips Jr., who left open a position filled by former HP CEO Mark Hurd, has landed a job as CEO of Atlanta-based software maker Infor, reports The New York Times.
The Times describes Infor this way:
Since its founding in 2002, Infor has tried to go after smaller customers neglected by the likes of SAP, Oracle and IBM. It built up its business selling software for the manufacturing and financial services sectors and then filled out its portfolio through 70 acquisitions.
Infor sells a wide range of products like customer relationship management, expense management, workforce management and supply chain management software.
Times writer Ashlee Vance also said the company owns "the largest middleware business no one has ever heard of."
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