I thought Gordon Gecko was dead?
More 'kin banker shenanigans where the only people who come out of it richer are the sharks.
Adaptec CEO resigns
Adaptec's CEO is resigning, and the company is up for sale. This confirms what many people have thought would happen once Steel Partners' gained control of the board after a proxy battle. Sundi Sundresh, who became Adaptec's CEO in November 2005, then already its president, is leaving on January 4th and will be replaced by …
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Thursday 17th December 2009 20:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
Unsurprising
It comes as little surprise that Adaptec have fallen on hard times: its products haven't exactly been up to scratch for the past few years they've failed to keep abreast of the competition. Better R&D instead of relying on their brand while they punt any old crap might have saved them, but what's done is done.
That said, it's a sad end to a once good company: with good leadership they might have turned around, but by the sound of it, it'll go the same way as far too many others who've caught the attention of the asset-strippers.
I'd say it was the end of an era, but I think it ended at least five years back in Adaptec's case.
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Friday 18th December 2009 10:35 GMT Mark 49
Steel Partners - A Correction
Why did you have to write the last paragraph to describe Steel Partners as the swooping vultures coming in from the kill ? You've written the proper facts before, why put the wrong ones up now ?
Steel Partners have been major investors in Adaptec for nearly FIVE years. When they first invested many saw their focused strategy to realise value out of R&D and a proper sales model as the one way of saving and reviving a former giant of the business.
Sundi and his cronies not only fought them all the way, they spent a lot of time inventing creative ways to make it too expensive for themselves to be fired whilst continuing to rape the company in salary and expenses. During the last 5 years Sundi's strategy of doing whatever was diametrically opposite to what Steel was recommending has seen Adaptec's quarterly revenue drop by over 80% and a conservative estimate is that he's burned through $500M in one failed initiative after another.
A lot of people thought that Sundi's predecessor, Bob Stephens, was a disaster. Sundi has outdone Bob magnificently, or tragically depending on how one looks at it.
The ousting of Sundi by Steel is not something to be lamenting. If the company was to have been saved it should have been done at least 4 years ago. No one who has been involved with Adaptec will be sad to see Sundi go, in fact a lot of ex-employees are celebrating and if a big hole opened up and Sundi fell in they would celebrate harder.
The demise of a once great company like Adaptec is not down to some "money grabbing hedge fund", it's down to nest feathering bad management going back more than a decade. The current actions are merely due to Steel trying to recoup the millions they invested in Adaptec during the years they were denied any say in how the company was run.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
