Liberum CFO Data - Clue to The Job

Entrepreneur magazine analyzes the increasingly difficult job faced by CFOs.

CEO Watch - Gary Forsee, Sprint Nextel Update 2 - Steps Down

Gary Forsee made it official, he stepped down late Monday afternoon. The company appointed CFO Paul Saleh as Acting CEO. Now comes the real test, what will Sprint Nextel do? In a piece by Amy Thomson of Bloomberg:

Even with new leadership, Sprint may have a tough time meeting the challenge of stitching together two networks after the $36 billion purchase of Nextel Communications Inc. in 2005. The stock has fallen 22 percent since the acquisition, customers still complain about dropped calls, and new ads haven't stemmed the loss of subscribers.

"The problems that Sprint Nextel has are bigger than Gary Forsee,'' said Chris King, a Stifel Nicolaus & Co. analyst in Baltimore who rates the shares ``hold'' and doesn't own them. "This is certainly not a story that's going to be turned around in six months or so, regardless of who's in charge.''

An earlier story in Computerworld summed up Sprint's situation succinctly:

Forsee's departure is good for the company, said Tad Neeley, a principal at Gemini Partners Inc. and a private equity investor in a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO).

"Sprint now needs to focus on developing its strategic plan and figuring out, really, what it wants to be," Neeley said. "Gary Forsee wasn't really providing that kind of leadership." Although it has valuable assets, such as a good [third-generation] mobile data network and the spectrum it's using for WiMax, Sprint hasn't made the most of the Nextel acquisition, he said.

Stay tuned.


For more:

BusinessWeek (more analysis)
Bloomberg Update
USA Today
CNN Money
GigaOm
Newsvine
MarketWatch
Yahoo
Bloomberg
BloggingStocks

CEO Watch - Gary Forsee, Sprint Nextel Update

Leslie Cauley in USA Today reported earlier today,

"Sprint, reeling from news reports that it is searching for a new CEO, plans to announce that its chairman and CEO, Gary Forsee, is stepping down, according to people familiar with the board's plans.

Sprint, which could announce Forsee's departure as early as Monday, plans to appoint an interim successor until a permanent replacement can be found, these same sources said. They declined to be identified by name or affiliation because no official announcement has been made by Sprint."

The question remains can a new management turn things around quickly enough? This specific issue was briefly covered by Monica Alleven in today's Wireless Week in Review.

Stay tuned as Sprint navigates into new and unsettling waters.

For more:

SEC Investor
WSJ Deal Journal

CEO Watch - Gary Forsee Sprint Nextel

Sprint Nextel remains mum on speculation that its Chairman and CEO, Gary Forsee may be on the chopping block. Forsee has been under the gun for sometime now as Sprint has continued to lag behind its main competitors. With Sprint's recent crap shoot on Wimax technology more and more shareholders (activists in particular) are expressing their growing concerns. The Wall Street Journal on its website Thursday afternoon:

... quoted unidentified people familiar with the situation, that Sprint Nextel's board had begun quietly talking to industry leaders for a successor and hoped to announce a selection by early December.

The real question remains, who could Sprint-Nextel come up with that could do a better job. If you have any ideas, let us know.

For more:

Information Week
Bloomberg Update1
International Herald Tribune
CNN Money
Deal Journal (suggested possibilities)

Accounting Problems Ensnare International Rectifier Execs

International Rectifier IRF (NYSE), the maker of energy management systems, announced that its CEO and director Alex Lidlow resigned October 2nd effective immediately. Lidlow had already been on a leave of absence since late August after an accounting problem appeared to become more problematic. In a regulatory filing in May this year the company stated its financial statements dating back to September 2005 "should no longer be relied upon."

As the company initiated an internal investigation top executives began to be ensnared in the issues surrounding the problems. With Lidlow's resignation the firm has already lost three top ranking management officials. According to a piece by Alex Pham in the Los Angeles Times:

Since launching its investigation, it has delayed reporting quarterly financial statements to the Securities and Exchange Commission. ...In July, the company dismissed then-Chief Financial Officer Michael McGee without explanation. At the same time, Robert Grant, executive vice president for global sales, resigned.

At the time of Lidlow's initial leave of absence the company appointed general counsel Don Dancer as interim CEO. Dancer will continue in his role as acting CEO. As part of the company strategy to resolve the accounting problems it also announced plans to appoint a lead independent director (Jack Vance) and devise a special committee of the board to advise and support the acting chief executive officer. The company also changed reporting relationships at its Japan subsidiary, where the initial problems arose, to improve oversight, and added interim processes to help assure the unit adheres to proper revenue recognition policies.

The company has also engaged Korn Ferry to assist the firm in hiring a permanent CEO. It is difficult to ascertain at this point in time whether the firm can properly right the ship and get on with its business. So far the market has indicated a positive on the management moves but time will tell. Keep an eye on both Dancer and Vance to get a feel for how they plan to get the operation working smoothly again. Make sure to check out Michele Leder's piece on footnoted.org on International Rectifier.

For more:

Footnoted.org
Los Angeles Times
EE Times
Reuters
Electronics Weekly
Forbes

Activists Finally Prevail at PDL BioPharma

PDL BioPharma PDLI (NASDAQ) finally gave in to the pressures of activist investors, Third Point LLC, and Highland Capital Management. Mark McDade the CEO has stepped down as CEO and director effective immediately and the company has agreed to seek offers for the sale of the company in whole or in key parts. We already discussed the capitulation of the PDL's CEO back on August 20th. Now comes agreement to seek a sale whether full or partial.

For more see:

Mercury News
Blogging Buyouts
CNN Money

CEO Watch - Chuck Prince, Citigroup

Just as things were getting better for Chuck Prince the credit crisis roared its ugly head. Prince is once again under the gun and this time he may be forced to give up. As the bank warned on Monday that its third-quarter profit would slide 60 percent pressures grew again for Prince's head.

For more on the growing story:

IHT
24/7 WallStreet
Washington Post
FT
FT AlphaVille
AOL Money & Finance
Bloggingstocks

CEO - Watch -- Patricia Russo, Alcatel-Lucent

Rumors continue that Patricia Russo, CEO of telecommunications firm Alcatel-Lucent ALU (NYSE) is under pressure to present a restructuring plan or may be on her way out.

For more see:

Financial Times
Barron's Blog
TheStreet
Newsvine
Wall Street Journal
Trading Markets
Reuters

Pay For Performance Innovator Still A Believer

As CEO pay continues to be a hot topic, one of the original innovators in this concept, Michael Jensen, a professor emeritus at the Harvard Graduate School of Business remains a true believer. In an article by Louis Uchitelle in the International Herald Tribune he discusses Dr. Jensen's thoughts on the concept and how he thinks it can be fixed. Take a look if you are interested in CEO pay.

Food For Thought On Long Serving CEOs

According to a September 26 piece by Dennis Berman on The Wall Street Journal's Deal Journal,

the fifth year of a CEO’s tenure is his most tumultuous, and the one where he is most likely to do a deal, according to a fresh study of CEO behavior conducted by two Harvard Law School professors.

The professors John C. Coates IV and Reinier Kraakman crunched numbers on CEO tenure at S&P 500 companies from 1992 through 2004, representing a total of 6,449 analyzed years. They found that during the first four years of a CEO’s stay, the turnover is very low.

Once the fifth year hits, all kinds of weird things start to happen. The number of mergers at such companies surges nearly four-fold in that fifth year. Retirements accelerate as well.

For more on the study check out the professors' report. If you want to perform your own analysis you might consider checking out Liberum's Management Change Database which is far more comprehensive than the data used by the two Harvard Professors.