Western Digital Names a New Financial Chief : Hiring: D. Scott Mercer, formerly of Businessland, will take over as senior vice president and the fourth CFO in a little over a year.
Western Digital Corp., a maker of personal computer parts, said Monday that it has hired a former Businessland Inc. executive as its senior vice president and chief financial officer.
D. Scott Mercer will assume responsibility for financial activities at Western Digital on Oct. 14, taking over from acting chief financial officer George L. Bragg, who will continue as vice chairman of Western Digital.
Mercer will be the fourth chief financial officer at Western Digital in 14 months. A.J. (Bert) Moyer quit the post in August, 1990, as Western Digital began a corporate restructuring that is ongoing.
In December, the company hired David W. Murphy, an AT&T; veteran, as a replacement, but he left on a permanent leave of absence for medical reasons this summer.
Bragg became acting chief financial officer and vice chairman in June. He had worked with Roger W. Johnson, chief executive of Western Digital, during the 1970s in a turnaround effort at a Memorex Corp. computer disk-drive subsidiary.
Mercer was chief financial officer at Businessland in 1991 until the computer retailer was acquired by JWP Inc. in August. Before that, he served eight years at semiconductor company LSI Logic Corp. in Milpitas, including working as chief financial officer from 1987 to 1990.
In its fiscal year ended June 30, Western Digital reported a loss of $134.2 million on sales of $986 million, contrasted with net income of $24.2 million on revenue of $1.07 billion for the year-earlier period.
During the past year, the company also laid off 1,000 employees and closed several plants, including one in Irvine, as it transformed its manufacturing from a focus on making circuit boards to fabricating semiconductor chips.
To ease its financial crunch, the company this summer renegotiated its $160 million in long-term debt and agreed to sell its networking-products unit for $33 million--a deal expected to close later this month.
