Novell Sun Move On Job Cuts

FREE IFN Newsletter

Novell, Sun Move On Job Cuts

By: David Utter
2006-06-23

While a pair of changes atop Novell's corporate structure boosted the share price by more than nine percent, Sun Microsystem's tepid start to slashing jobs saw its shares drop slightly in trading.

Novell (NOVL) showed CEO Jack Messman and CFO Joseph Tibbetts, Jr, the door yesterday, in a long-awaited move by the company to try and lift Novell to better performance. The company has attempted to become an open source software power, and its SuSE Linux distribution ranks second to market leader Red Hat.

The board of directors moved quickly to shake up Novell's headquarters. They sent Messman and Tibbetts packing on the 21st, and added the CEO title to president Ron Hovsepian's job duties. Corporate controller Dana Russell will serve as the interim CFO until the board finds a permanent replacement for Tibbetts.

Novell has skewed the executive leadership much younger, pending the full-time replacement for Tibbetts. Hovsepian is 45, and already has 17 years with IBM under his belt as he replaces the 66-year-old Messman, who along with the 53-year-old Tibbetts could not hang on after last month's awful quarterly earnings numbers.

While it had been speculated that Sun Microsystems (SUNW) would trim its workforce by 4,000 to 5,000 on Wednesday, CEO Jonathan Schwartz instead announced a cut of only 400 jobs.

Sun had already announced it would make the larger number of job cuts, but did not provide a timetable for them. Investors apparently expected them to take place much faster, and responded to the low initial number cited in BusinessWeek by knocking shares of Sun down to 4.25 in trading.

122 jobs were eliminated in Sun's Colorado operations, while another 113 exited the company's Menlo Park, CA, campus. While that may indicate Schwartz wants to take Sun's restructuring at a measured pace, it can't have a positive impact on internal morale at Sun as workers nationwide continue to speculate on when and where the axe will fall next.

---
Tags: NOVL, SUNW

Add to

Del.icio.us |

Digg |

Yahoo! My Web |

Furl

Bookmark IFN -

View All Articles by David Utter

About the Author:
David Utter is a staff writer for InternetFinancialNews and WebProNews covering technology and business.


Titan Quest Forum	Nintendo Wii	Graphics Forum
Halo 3 Forum	Mac Software