The latest twitch in McAfees top-management shudderings came on March 5 when the anti-virus security vendor announced that its board has named Dave DeWalt as the companys new CEO and president.
McAfee said in a release that DeWalt will start on April 2 and is also expected to join the board.
The companys executive shuffling started soon after it got into hot water with the Securities and Ex-change Commission last year. In January 2006, the SEC ordered McAfee to pay a $50 million fine after a long-running investigation into ques-tionable accounting practices.
The fine came after the SEC filed securities fraud charges against McAfee, alleging that the company inflated revenue by $622 million between 1998 and 2000.
McAfee announced in March 2006 that it was plucking company veteran Kevin Weiss out of his role as executive vice president of worldwide sales and plugging him into the role of president.
At the time, McAfee also gave more power to Chief Financial Officer Eric Brown, who took on the additional responsibilities of chief operating officer. Dale Fuller, who eventually served as McAfees interim president and CEO, will resign his position effective April 1, 2007.
DeWalt was most recently executive vice president and president of customer operations for EMC, where he oversaw customer operations worldwide, including global sales and services. He also re-cently managed the Documentum content management business.
Prior to that, DeWalt was presi-dent of EMCs Software Group, a multi-billion dollar software division within EMC, where he oversaw business operations, product development and customer operations.
McAfees statement said that under DeWalts leadership, the business grew to one of the 10 largest software businesses in the world.
DeWalt joined EMC in 2003 when EMC acquired content man-agement vendor Documentum, where he had served as president and CEO since 2001. DeWalt led the company through 13 consecutive record quarters, McAfee said, and sold the company to EMC in a transaction valued at about $1.7 billion dollars.
DeWalts has held jobs in engineering, product management, marketing and sales management in tech companies including Oracle, Quest Software, Eventus Software and Segue Software.
“Dave brings strong execution skills, a proven ability to lead top performing teams and an excellent track record in driving shareholder value to McAfee,” Chuck Robel, non-executive chairman of McAfee, said in McAfees release.
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