As anticipated (CI No 3,355), Sybase Inc announced changes to its top management structure yesterday, creating the new office of the chief executive at the company, which will see current chief executive officer Mitchell Kertzman sharing the position with president and chief operating officer John Chen. Kertzman will be chairman and chief executive officer, while Chen will be president and chief executive officer. Chen, who before he joined Sybase eight months ago was CEO of Siemens Pyramid Information Systems Inc (CI No 3,206), will take control of the day to day running of the company, leaving Kertzman to concentrate on the company’s future directions and on projecting Sybase into the outside world of customers, press and shareholders. Kertzman insisted that he himself proposed the move to the board of directors of the struggling company, and that they had agreed unanimously. There was no pressure from the board, he insisted. The longer term plan seems to be that Chen will take over as sole CEO, leaving Kertzman the role, in his own words, of an active chairman but he wouldn’t be drawn on the timescales for such a move. Sybase’s senior vice president of worldwide sales, Mike Forster also announced his retirement, another move Kertzman insisted had been in the plans for some time. There is no way any of us are satisfied with our performance or stock price – but everything we are doing is aimed at putting the best team on the field he said. Sybase also announced plans to repurchase up to $25m of its common stock, with Kutzman saying the stock offered great value at current prices. Sybase intends to concentrate on three market initiatives in an attempt to get itself back into full health: data warehousing, web computing and mobile computing database applications. It will demonstrate early versions of its web-based products in July when it uses them at the World Cup in France, for which it is providing technology along with Hewlett- Packard Co, Electronic Data Systems Corp and France Telecom SA.
