Another Top Official Leaves MAI Systems
In another sign of a rocky corporate restructuring, MAI Systems Corp. announced Wednesday that Fred D. Anderson Jr. has resigned as president and chief operating officer of the computer reseller to pursue other interests.
Anderson, 46, is the second top officer to leave MAI since November, when company Chairman William Weksel departed to pursue other interests. Bennett S. LeBow, the New York financier with an 80% stake in MAI, is currently serving as chairman.
Fred Anderson will be replaced by Peter S. Anderson (no relation), a former Western Union Corp. executive who is a longtime associate of Robert J. Amman, MAI’s new vice chairman. Amman, a former chief executive of Western Union and a LeBow ally, started at MAI in February.
Amman said the change in top executives is an attempt to bring in a manager with experience at turning around struggling companies.
“Fred is a strong executive, and this change doesn’t reflect on him,” he said. “But the company is going through a transition and Peter Anderson has gone through this kind of change before.”
As president and chief operating officer since January, 1990, Fred Anderson had overseen MAI’s conversion from a manufacturer of minicomputer systems to a value-added reseller of business software packaged with computers made by other companies.
As part of that restructuring, MAI has laid off more than 800 of its 3,400 employees during the last several months. It also reported a loss of $68.8 million for the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31.
“I believe the company has a good future ahead of it,” Fred Anderson said in a phone interview Wednesday. “It’s a big job to convert a company from a computer-manufacturing firm to a software-driven VAR (value-added reseller). The transition is a difficult one,” he said.
Fred Anderson, who started with MAI in 1978 in its international division, said he is not ready to disclose his future business plans. He declined to comment on whether his departure was related to the company’s recent loss and layoffs.
Steve DeLuca, an analyst at Cruttenden & Co., an investment banking firm in Newport Beach, said Fred Anderson’s departure is another sign of MAI’s struggle to escape the slump in the minicomputer industry after failing to acquire Prime Computer Inc. of Natick, Mass., in a 10-month takeover fight in 1988.
“They have clearly fallen on hard times ever since the failed takeover attempt,” he said. “Only the strong will survive as minicomputer makers and they have yet to come to the forefront in this new business.”
Peter Anderson had been with Western Union Corp., which last month was renamed New Valley Corp., since 1988, serving in several senior management capacities. Most recently he was president of Western Union Priority Services, which handles mass telegrams for businesses, and was a senior vice president of the parent company.
