By Siobhan Kennedy
Just three months after filing for bankruptcy protection, struggling pioneer modem manufacturer, Hayes Microcomputer Products, was finally forced to throw in the towel this week, with the announcement it is shutting down operations and preparing for liquidation. But speaking to ComputerWire from his home Wednesday, the company’s former chairman and CEO, Ron Howard, revealed he was in last-minute talks with Hayes’ lending bank, NationsCredit, to try and persuade it not to sell off all the company’s assets thereby ensuring that the company could emerge again, with a new face, at some stage in the future. I’m waiting for them to call me today to see if they have reconsidered their view, he said. Under the liquidation order, he said Hayes was forced to cease all its US operations, laying off about 250 employees across North America and Asia Pacific. For the moment, the UK operation will remain intact. Howard said the UK group was effectively a free standing company anyway and that it was likely the unit would now look for a potential buyer. Throughout the conversation, Howard criticized NationsCredit for what he called its shortsighted approach to the situation. The measures they’re taking are ill-conceived in terms of being able to recover the maximum value for the assets. The former CEO said he wants the bank to reconsider and make what he calls a more prudent move, whereby the core intellectual property and key engineers would be retained while the company seeks investment to get itself back on its feet again. At one point, Howard put the telephone interview on hold to answer another, incoming call which he joked, is probably the bank, but as we went to press last night, Howard said he still hadn’t heard a peep. They can either do this responsibly or irresponsibly. If you have software and engineers that could potentially be worth $1m, then it would seem silly to them let them go wouldn’t it? Hayes filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy court protection in October 1998, the second time in five years. While the company said it was putting together a reorganization plan – to encompass broadband, remote- access server, and voice-over-IP initiatives – Howard said its primary lender, NationsCredit, refused to lend sufficient funds to enable ongoing operations to continue in the interim. Instead, the bank said it was only prepared to finance a liquidation budget. In an official statement Tuesday, the company announced that chief operations officer Steve Mank, chief financial officer Chuck Marantz, and CEO Ron Howard are no longer with the company. P.K. Chan will continue as president of Hayes, and Howard will continue serving on the company’s board of directors.
