Mercury’s former COO, Ken Klein, announced in October 2003 that he would leave the company by the end of that year in order to pursue outside interests. Since that time chairman and CEO Amnon Landan has apparently not been on the hunt for a replacement. However according to Zingale, with the company’s expansion of late it became clear that Mercury needed more horsepower.
Zingale was quick to set out his new plans, saying in an interview with ComputerWire that he is determined to turn Mercury into one of the top five software companies in the next three to five years.
According to Mercury’s chief marketing officer Christopher Lochhead, Landan and Zingale will practically be sharing the leadership role: Tony [Zingale’s] role is far larger than Ken [Klein’s], he said. This is a president and COO role, it’s like job sharing at the top. Tony will be running pretty much everything except finance.
Asked whether Zingale’s appointment as COO and president was the start of an orderly transition into the CEO role, Zingale said, That’s not something that is on my current agenda. I would always want to have the opportunity to lead a technology company as successful as Mercury Interactive. If it happens some time in the future then it happens. My primary focus now is to keep the success equation at Mercury humming.
Mr Zingale holds a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical and computer engineering and a Bachelor of Arts degree in business administration from the University of Cincinnati. He serves on the boards of content management vendor Interwoven, and Blazent, a privately held analytics company.
Landan has not done a bad job, despite running the company for a year without a COO: in its latest quarter ended September 30 it saw sales up 31% to $165.4 million, and the company posted a net income of $19 million, up from a loss last time of $6.7 million.
