According to a story in The Register Rackable’s executive purge continues with the dismissal of Todd Ford, the company’s former Executive Vice President, effective last week.
According to the regulatory filing, Ford walks away with 12 months of continued salary ($350,000 US) and health insurance, and accelerated vesting for his stock options. According to the article at The Register the change wasn’t unexpected:
Over the last couple of months, Rackable had said that Ford would leave the company at the end of the year. It seems his departure was accelerated by new CEO Mark Barrenechea.
The company’s share price (see chart, click for a fullsize version) has dropped from over $40 a year ago to around $12 this morning.
You may recall that Rackable announced in April that it lost $10.2M US in Q1 triggered by a loss of business with Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Amazon to competitors IBM, HP, Sun, and Dell. Earlier this year Rackable also announced it’s own containerized computing solution to compete with Sun’s, and was the subject of acquisition rumors with Sun that haven’t panned out.
From The Register:
Our sources contend that Rackable passed on a lucrative acquisition offer from Dell, which served as the trigger for the management shuffle.