April 9th, 2008
More Motorola makeover: Former AT&T exec becomes chairman
Motorola announced Wednesday another in a series of moves to right its ship: It elected David Dorman to be the non-executive chairman of the board.
Dorman takes over for Ed Zander, Motorola’s former CEO and current chairman. Zander will retire May 5.
Motorola CEO Greg Brown said in a statement that Dorman “is ideally suited to serve as Motorola’s chairman and I am confident that our shareholders will continue to benefit from his industry knowledge and deep understanding of the company.”
What else is Brown going to say?
The larger question is whether the appointment of Dorman–and the series of recent moves by Motorola–add up to anything. For those keeping score at home.
- Motorola settled with activist investor Carl Icahn and named William Hambrecht, CEO of W.R. Hambrecht, to its board along with Keith Meiser, a managing director of Icahn’s investment funds and principal executive officer of Icahn Enterprises. All lawsuits between Icahn and Motorola will be dropped.
- Motorola also said it will split itself in two and separate its struggling handset business from its networking, broadband and mobility equipment unit.
That’s quite a makeover in just a few weeks. It’s still not clear whether those moves will materially matter to Motorola anytime soon.
Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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