Candle Corp, Santa Monica, California, has appointed former IBM Corp US sales chief Bob LaBant as its new president and COO. LaBant has been consulting with a venture capital firm since he resigned from Big Blue after Louis Gerstner chose Ned Lauten bach to head a global sales force in its January 1995 reorganization instead of LaBant (CI No 2,577). LaBant has been working with Candle for several months, advising on its open systems and systems and application management makeover. Candle recently won a four-part, multi-million dollar contract to manage MCI Telecommunications Corp mainframes and servers (CI No 2,940). It is promising other large contracts for its Command Center management over the summer. Candle founder, chairman and CEO Aubrey Chernick has been without a president for sometime; they have come and gone during his 20 tenure. Chernick is also in charge of R&D since Sam Greenblatt left for Computer Associates International Inc nearly a year ago and has not been replaced.
