Klaus Luft, who had been groomed to succeed Heinz Nixdorf as chairman and chief executive of Nixdorf Computer AG, shocked the company’s supervisory board by tendering his resignation ahead of its meeting on Monday. Luft succeeded to the top job on the sudden death of the company’s founder at the Hannover Fair in 1986. The tidal wave of users demanding vendor-independent standards gathered pace soon after his accession and caught the Paderborn company on the hop, and it was hit by a sharp plunge in business last year, which has accelerated this year. Luft is succeeded – at least on an interim basis – by Horst Nasko, director responsible for telecommunications, one of the bright spots in the gloom at Nixdorf. Nasko is named as board spokesman.
