National Hockey League team The Hartford Whalers has won grudging approval for its move from Hartford, Connecticut, to North Carolina a year earlier than allowed in its contract with the state, but for a stiff price – it must pay a penalty of $21.7m. But the Whalers owner decided paying out lots of money now to make more later is a price worth paying. And he should know – for in his day job Peter Karmanos is chairman and chief executive officer of Farmington Hills, Michigan-based software and services heavyweight Compuware Corp. Compuware has had a difficult couple of seasons trying to move beyond a reliance on mainframe software to a more balanced mix of client/server and professional services, and he seems to have finally got his team there. Compuware’s fiscal 1997 (CI No 3,154) saw revenue up 32.3% to $812.9m, with net income increasing from $44.2m to $97.4m, with client/server, including the Uniface product development environment, up 8.1% year on year, to $88.0m of sales. Karmanos, a keen supporter of hockey, may have been criticized for moving the team to a new $120m facility in Raleigh, North Carolina, but he seems to know what he’s doing, both in the boardroom and in his luxury box at the hockey game, too.
