In a sudden swoop on Friday, Sybase Inc president and chief executive Mark Hoffman came to the UK and ousted John Louth, vice-president of international operations; John Stevens vice-president of marketing; Malcolm Neill, UK managing director and John Radford, international business manager. The coup has come as part of a radical restructuring of the company under which international operations that had been split in two as Europe and the Asia Pacific region will now be integrated under the leadership of Dave Peterschmidt who was previously vice-president of North American sales and who will continue to be based in Emeryville, California. Both Louth and Stevens have been kept on for a short period in a consultancy capacity as Sybase moves to strategic sales from the technical sales approach of old. Hoffman claims that under the old management the European operation had been targetting sales at the departmental level and that this restructuring – which may eliminate managing directors in every European country – will take Sybase up to the corporate level decision-makers in the big multinational companies that Sybase is now eyeing as its user base. Meanwhile international operations will reside in the UK with the technical services group providing secondary support for all of Europe. Sybase appears to have bought the Federal States of Europe idea implicit in the Single Market and argues that having separate managing directors, warehouses and so on in each country no longer makes sense. Hoffman added that he was tired of having to reconcile operational differences between Europe and North America and that with the promotion of Peterschmidt he should no longer have to get involved. International revenue currently accounts for 30% of overall worldwide revenues, and around 85% of this currently comes from Europe. Sybase is aiming for an even revenue split between Europe, North America and Asia Pacific, which seems to suggest that a good deal of the resources over the coming months will be given over to growing the Asia Pacific market – in other words cracking that wealthy but difficult market, Japan.
