Symantec CEO fired

The corporate world was good enough to provide us with the latest edition of musical chairs today. In an interesting move, the security and storage company Symantec, fired their CEO, Enrique Salem…oh wait, that was in 2012.

My bad.

Symantec fired their CEO Steve Bennet and made the announcement after the markets closed today. He will be replace by Michael Brown from the board of directors.

Symantec’s stock suffered in after hours trading as a result. 

From Symantec Press Release:

Symantec Corp. (NASDAQ: SYMC) today announced that its board of directors has appointed board member Michael Brown as interim president and chief executive officer, effective immediately. This appointment follows the termination of Steve Bennett as the company’s president and chief executive officer and his resignation from Symantec’s board of directors.

Ouch! So, it seems the board was anything but happy with his performance. The fact that they used the word “termination” puts a fine point on that one. 

Our priority is now to identify a leader who can leverage our company’s assets and leadership team to drive the next stage of Symantec’s product innovation and growth. This considered decision was the result of an ongoing deliberative process, and not precipitated by any event or impropriety.”

What a delightfully oddly worded press release. Leveraging the assets leads me to suspect that there was a lot of internal kludge and that was causing a break down in the corporate machinery. No idea if that is accurate but, I have to admit that having to fire their second CEO in two years doesn’t look very good. 

Free advice to Michael Brown, when the music stops make sure you have a chair.

(Image used under CC from -Vik-)