Unisys Announces CEO Headcount Reduction
by John Paczkowski
Posted on September 25, 2008 at 5:14 AM PT
It’s taken quite a while, but Unisys has finally settled on a way to maximize shareholder value: Get rid of CEO Joseph McGrath. The IT services provider (and creator of the behemoth UNIVAC, or UNIVersal Automatic Computer) said this week that McGrath, who has presided over a 60 percent decline in Unisys’s share price, will step down by the end of the year. He will, however, continue to lead the firm until a successor is named.
“[The] directors and Mr. McGrath agreed that a change in leadership would best enable Unisys to move forward on accelerating execution of the company’s strategy,” the company said in a statement. No surprise there. The Unisys leadership–McGrath, in particular–has been under fire for a year now from MMI Investments LP, a New York investment outfit that holds about 9 percent of Unisys stock and isn’t at all happy with the way the company’s being managed. In an angry letter to the Unisys board of directors at the beginning of this year, MMI said it “felt tremendous frustration with the seemingly continuous stream of management, operational and financial missteps” at the company.
