AOL chief technology officer resigns: sources
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AOL's chief technology officer Maureen  Govern, who oversaw the division responsible for accidentally  releasing search data for more than a half a millions users,  has resigned from the company, according to an internal company  memorandum.
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(InfoWorld) - After a dozen years serving as the chief executive of VeriSign,Â Stratton Sclavos resignedÂ on May 29, leaving some onlookers wondering why, even as longtime critics on Wall St. openly praised his departure. The 45-year-old CEO's abdication of his leadership position at Mountain View, Calif.-based VeriSign -- a technology company with a business model so diverse it defies simple definition -- produced an immediate vote of confidence in the company from some in the investment community. Yet, at the same time, people who did business with the executive and claim to know him well contend that the predisposition toward controversialÂ acquisitionsÂ and far-ranging business plans that led to Sclavos' push-out at the hands of the company's board, was undeniably the same vision that has allowed VeriSign to become the IT industry giant it is today. In the company's most recently reported financials, for fiscal year 2006, VeriSign reported $1.58 billion in annual sales. Through its many acquisitions, including such brand names asÂ Internet registrar Network SolutionsÂ for roughly $15 billion in 2000, VeriSign created a business model that fused its original expertise in Web security technology with everything from network connectivity services to online domain name registrations. OtherÂ buy-upsÂ led by Sclavos over the years of his tenure included providers of mobile phone ring tones, online content aggregation tools, and even blog site publishing capabilities. In many cases, Wall St. critics questioned the need for such diversification, even when the companies the CEO was buying were adding to VeriSign's bottom line. With the executive gone, some institutional investors began calling for the firm to pare down its interests rapidly to discard many of the company's far-flung additions. In a report published on the same day that news of Sclavos' resignation emerged, analysts at investment bank Credit Suisse First Boston noted the CEO's departure "removes a significant overhang related to investors' general view of VeriSign's senior management as a historically under-performing team." Among the immediate benefits of Scalvos' departure would be the opportunity for VeriSign to sell off some of the "non-core assets" that the CEO had brought under the company's auspices, according to the report. In a similar note that at least conceded that VeriSign "benefited from Sclavos' strategic vision," analysts at Wall St. stalwart Merrill-Lynch pointed out that the resignation could lead to the sale of all or parts of the company. Â The investment firm also speculated that VeriSign's Board may have "viewed [Sclavos'] unbroken tenure as an obstacle to fundamental changes to the business." With VeriSign officials denying that the resignation had anything to do with an ongoing review of the company's historical stock option grant practices -- being carried out by a group of its board members -- onlookers who know Sclavos well said that the executive's drive to keep VeriSign relevant with the latest trends in information technology is what ultimately led to his exodus. Neil Creighton, chef executive of managed security services firm Chosen Security, was CEO of digital certificates vendor GeoTrust when Sclavos and VeriSign bought the firm for $125 million in May 2006. Creighton said he was surprised and even saddened by the news of Sclavos' stepping down, and that he spent much of the day Tuesday wondering how it ever came to pass. "When you look at the company and what it has done over the last twelve years, it's hard not to give Stratton credit for building VeriSign from a $10 million security provider into a company doing $1.6 billion in sales," Creighton said. "Other security companies who were competing with VeriSign in the nineties are either gone or have market caps of $200 million right now." Creighton said that a combination of Wall St. demands for more clarity in VeriSign's business model, along with recent turnover on the company's board, most likely forced Sclavos to move on in the face of mounting criticism. A desire by those parties to shift the strategic direction of VeriSign wouldn't easily gel with its former CEO's aggressive long-term vision, he said. Creighton feels that a lack of understanding for where Sclavos wanted to take the company in the future probably led for some VeriSign insiders to echo investors' calls for a clearer short-term focus. "He is a very visionary guy, and people like that aren't usually right all the time, but VeriSign may be sacrificing the long-term journey he's been planning for years in favor of meeting short-term goals," said Creighton. "There's a lot of pressure to look short-term versus long-term and he was a long term-kind of guy; perhaps his vision was ultimately too big for other people involved with company." While some outsiders might speculate where VeriSign would be today if it had stuck to the lucrative security market, Creighton, whose company directly competes with the firm, said he has no doubts that Sclavos made the right call. "His old competitors aren't even around anymore for the most part," he said. "If he sat there as a pure security player, VeriSign would have been a much different company, and it would have struggled a lot more than it has." Other business relations of Sclavos' said that the executive may have been wiser not to stray so far from the security segment, but observed that it remains hard to argue with the results of the CEO's work when considering the scale of VeriSign today. "If VeriSign had stuck with its core competencies and worked around fringes of all that, with security comes high margins, and maybe it could have been more profitable, but this company also has high margins with its security, registry and digital certificates businesses today," said Georges Yared, a senior partner directing international sales for both Wessels, Arnold and Henderson, and ThinkEquity Partners. "The only real issue was with the company's board; the stock has had some issues these last four to five years, and Stratton wanted to expand the business beyond the most profitable areas, and therein lies the rub," said Yared, who is also the author of several financial self-help books and writes a blog for AOL's Money & Finance portal. Yared, who has known Sclavos since before his days at VeriSign and said he often brought European investors to meet with the CEO in Silicon Valley, claims that on Wall St. the departed business leader was a polarizing figure, with some buying into his vision, and others extremely unhappy with his performance. After Sclavos resigned, Yared said, several institutional investment firms that have never before purchased VeriSign's stock immediately began to buy in. "It seems like people either loved Stratton or they didn't like him very much at all, and he was certainly a fossil by Silicon Valley standards, staying on top for 12 years," Yared said. "The knock on him will be that he was overly acquisitive, that he wanted to acquire whatever he saw as vital to growing VeriSign, and with that came a few mistakes and overpayments." Creighton and Yared uniformly agreed on one point -- predicting that it likely won't be long before Sclavos finds a new effort to lead. "I wish he could have back last five or six years, that he would have conducted the company a bit differently, because I'm a big fan and I'm sorry to see him go," Yared said. "But I wouldn't imagine it will be very long before we see Stratton in Silicon Valley again."
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(InfoWorld) - A month afterÂ Jonathan Miller was fired unexpectedlyÂ as AOL chief executive, three of the senior executives who reported directly to him and who oversee key areas of AOL's business are on their way out,Â sources say. Jim Bankoff, executive vice president of consumer and publisher services, and Joe Redling, president of AOL Mobile, customer management and paid services, and chairman and CEO of AOL International, will leave the company soon, along with John Buckley, executive vice president of corporate communications. All three are still with the company but have set the process in motion to pack their bags and move on, taking advantage of a so-called "change of control" clause in their contracts, sources said. Joining them will be John McKinley, who, as had been confirmed previously, is leaving at the end of the year after a temporary stint as chief technology officer. Like Miller's dismissal, the departures of Bankoff and Redling will no doubt send shockwaves through the management ranks at AOL. Both were top generals for Miller, who chose them to figure prominently in the restructuring plan he drafted and began to implement in September. "Jim will have the dedicated distribution, adoption and technology resources to be able to manage his portfolio of programming initiatives, from instant messaging to social networking sites such as AIM Pages," Miller wrote of Bankoff in a memo in September in which he outlined the plan. In that document, Miller also assigned Bankoff the task of developing a new publishing and content-management system, calling the project "a priority for the company that Jim will spearhead." Meanwhile, Miller called Redling "one of AOL's most capable executives" and described Redling's main business responsibilities -- mobile, customer relationships and international -- as "three key initiatives that directly address our future." Redling was supposed to boost AOL's advertising business abroad, while designing a new international structure. In mobile, Redling was entrusted with developing an area in which Miller said AOL had never placed enough investment or focus. The departures of Redling and Bankoff will likely make industry observers wonder if AOL runs the risk of derailing, at a time when it is undergoing a critical structural and strategic overhauling. Before his sudden ouster, Miller had garnered general praise from pundits for steering AOL through a radical transformation, from a company focused on dial-up Internet access subscription fees to one focused on online advertising. Miller's replacement, Randy Falco, is a TV industry veteran who was president and chief operating officer of the NBC Universal Television Group and doesn't come from the Internet field. Bankoff has been with AOL since 1995, and has held a variety of positions, including president of AOL Web Properties and president of AOL eCommerce. Redling came to AOL in 1999 as senior vice president of marketing for the AOL service and was later promoted to marketing president. An official announcement from AOL about the impending departures of these executives and their replacements is likely to come next week, sources said. AOL declined to comment.
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As the stakes slide higher in the search technology game, Ask.com's CEO is now leaving that search firm company, just days after Microsoft made a $1.2 billion bid for troubled search software firm Fast Search & Transfer.
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After just a six-month stint as the head of the company's technology arm, Yahoo CTO Farzad Nazem will leave the company June 8. The announcement was revealed in a Wednesday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
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Ted Leonsis, a self-made technology entrepreneur who helped turn AOL into a multibillion-dollar business and later helped guide it through a recovery from the dot-com bust, said yesterday that he plans to step down at the end of the year from his day-to-day responsibilities at the company to focus...
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Ted Leonsis, a top leader at AOL for 13 years, will give up his management role but remain vice chairman of the company.
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WASHINGTON -- The nationâs top cyber-security official has resigned unexpectedly, raising new questions about the progress of efforts to protect the nationâs vast computer networks from terror attacks, electronic viruses and other threats, government
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- Internet security company VeriSign Inc.  said Chief Financial Officer Dana Evan has resigned and that it filed certain restated reports with U.S. regulators.
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The United States&#39; top computer-security official has resigned after a little more than a year on the job, the US Department of Homeland Security said on Friday.
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The United States' top  computer-security official has resigned after a little more  than a year on the job, the U.S. Department of Homeland  Security said on Friday.
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By Sara Kehaulani Goo, Washington Post Staff Writer  Four top executives at AOL abruptly announced their intentions to leave the company yesterday, just days before new chief executive Randy Falco is expected to announce a major restructuring at the top.
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(InfoWorld) - The former chief executive of ATI Technologies has resigned from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) just nine months after the two companies combined in aÂ $5.4 billion merger. AMD said Tuesday that David Orton will resign as executive vice president after working through the end of this month. AMD had convinced Orton to remain with the company byÂ signing him to a $1.7 million contractÂ in October, shortly before completing the merger. As the president and CEO of ATI, Orton led efforts to compete with rival Nvidia in the building of high-end graphics boards for PCs, as well as cellphones, smartphones, and gaming consoles. By acquiring ATI, AMD hoped to become more competitive with Intel by creating aÂ single "Fusion" chipÂ that integrates its x86 microprocessor with ATI's graphics processor on a single piece of silicon. AMD wanted to retain Orton along with his ATI colleagues because of his ability to push ATI to success in the graphics, chip set, and consumer-electronics markets, said Dirk Meyer, AMD's president and chief operating officer, in a statement released Tuesday. However, AMD expects it will take until 2009 to complete the engineering necessary to bring the new Fusion chip to market. In the meantime, the chip vendor has been suffering from the effects of aÂ price warÂ that has made just a small dent in the profits of its much larger rival Intel. By contrast, AMD has watched its profits sink into the red, reportingÂ losses of $611 millionÂ and $574 million for its past two fiscal quarters. In a search for operating cash, AMD even decided to sell off a stake of the company,Â raising $2.2 billionÂ through the sale of convertible notes to institutional investors. That financial pressure may have been one factor contributing to Orton's departure. In a statement released Tuesday, Orton said he still had faith in the companies' merger strategy. "It is with mixed feelings that I am leaving AMD," Orton said. "I am very optimistic about AMD's future. I believe strongly in the strategies that brought AMD and ATI together and the talented employees of the 'new AMD' who are committed to winning in the market." In the wake of Orton's departure, AMD said that its CEO Hector Ruiz would now be the direct supervisor of Adrian Hartog, senior vice president and general manager for the consumer electronics group, and Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager for the graphics products group. Also this week, AMD renewed its determination to continue its price war with Intel, announcing Monday that it wasÂ cutting prices on its range of desktop PC chips, from the top-end Athlon 64 FX through the Athlon 64 X2 and Sempron families. In the longer term, AMD hopes to regain profitability with itsÂ "Barcelona" quad-core Opteron server chip. AMD plans to launch that processor in August to compete with Intel's dual-core "Woodcrest" and quad-core "Clovertown" Xeon processors launched last year, and quad-core "Harpertown" server chip due out in the fourth quarter of 2007. AMD may provide more details on Orton's departure and its new strategies when the vendor reports second-quarter fiscal 2007 earnings on July 19. Â
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Affiliated Computer Services Inc.  said on Monday its chief executive and chief financial officer had resigned because of their role in improper stock option grant practices.
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AOL, the Dulles-based Internet pioneer, yesterday said it was moving its headquarters to New York, transferring the leadership of a company that fueled the growth of the Washington area's technology industry over the past decade.
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AOL Media Networks executive David Lebow has been hired as president and chief executive officer of Internet Broadcasting Systems in Minnesota.  Lebow, who was executive vice president and general manager of AOL Media Networks, succeeds Reid Johnson as Internet Broadcasting's CEO.
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WASHINGTON - The head of cybersecurity efforts at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has reportedly resigned this week, leaving his job after giving a one-day notice.