Industry Humming Over Yuen’s Departure From AST Research : Computers: The co-founder’s action raises some age-old questions about power-sharing in the business world.

Ever fond of gossip, the computer industry hummed with speculation this week: Why did co-founder Thomas C. K. Yuen leave AST Research Inc.?

The consensus is that Yuen lost a months-long power struggle with Safi U. Qureshey, with whom he shared the title of co-chairman at the rags-to-riches Irvine-based clone-maker.

“Tom got ousted,” said one source, who asked not to be named. Said another: “Safi pulled a coup.”

Yuen’s departure may signal a coming of age for the gangly computer company that grew faster than an adolescent to Fortune 500 size. And it raises anew some age-old questions in the world of business. Can power really be shared? Can partners ever be equal? And can an executive succeed without the sort of single-mindedness that verges on monomania?

AST Research was an American success story. It was founded a dozen years ago in the inevitable garage by Yuen, Qureshey and Albert C. Wong, immigrants all. Yuen and Qureshey were engineers frustrated by their slow climb up the same corporate ladder. Wong was Yuen’s college roommate.

“We had some common background, an affinity, and we both bitched a lot,” Yuen said last April of himself and Qureshey.

Egalitarian from the outset, they named the company using their first initials and determined their original job titles by picking them from a hat. Wong became chief technology officer, in charge of engineering. Yuen got marketing decisions and day-to-day management. Qureshey oversaw finance and courted customers, Wall Street and the media.

They hit the jackpot with their very first product, an add-on memory board for the first IBM PC.

Soon enough, they were all millionaires, and AST was growing beyond the expectations of all who followed it. In 1987, the three men set up an executive committee of senior executives that became AST’s guiding force. Its formation ensured that AST could steer itself regardless of who left.

That was fortunate, because tensions soon developed. The founders had strong personalities. Lines of responsibility were vague.

The partnership shattered in November, 1988, when Wong clashed with Yuen over a product launch and quit in the heat of the moment. The remaining co-founders began to spread the word that the Three Musketeers were now two.

Two months later, AST ran aground in an industrywide slowdown. It reported its first quarterly loss and laid off 6% of its workers. Yuen and Qureshey were taken aback when Wong, after leaving the company, suggested in the media that the company needed “more professional management.”

Qureshey then took charge of engineering projects in addition to dealing with the outside world. Yuen took over day-to-day decision-making and marketing. And AST began a recovery that catapulted it into the top ranks of the PC market and brought praise from analysts who had written it off in 1989. Even Wong was astounded. He credited his former colleagues.

On a personal level, though, there was trouble. Qureshey spent much of his time tending to his daughter, who had been in an accident and required constant medical attention.

And Yuen was undergoing dialysis several times a week for kidney problems that would twice come close to killing him. Although he never seemed to lose his zeal for running the business, some managers avoided making proposals to him on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when the painful treatments might make him irritable. Yuen wanted to find a cure for his ailments, and his thoughts constantly wandered to biotechnology instead of computers.

Steadily, the engineers whom Wong had assembled left the company, some to join him at his rival start-up.

Tom Ludwig and Tom Craft, two engineering chiefs who, with Wong, had designed AST’s most successful machines, quit and started their own business. This was a blow: The two men had secretly designed AST’s first notebook computer, a model small enough to fit into a briefcase, even though their superiors had scuttled the project. Sales of the machine subsequently accounted for about 30% of AST’s $688.5 million in revenue for the year ended June 30, 1991.

AST, meanwhile, was looking and acting less like a partnership and more like a big corporation. The computer industry went through a withering price war in 1991. In November, Yuen brought his managers together and threw a tantrum, heaping “gutter language” on subordinates for a multitude of perceived failures.

Those familiar with AST say the final struggle between Yuen and Qureshey began several months ago, after Yuen decided that he should run the whole company. There is general agreement that he had the know-how, but Qureshey had the support of the board. And perhaps because of his abrasive style, few aligned themselves with Yuen.

Points of contention included delays in the company’s multiprocessing computer project, which has been in the works for more than two years. The project was supervised by Qureshey, who unsuccessfully tried to get the industry to accept standards for the new technology.

Another was the company’s second-generation notebook computer project, led by Yuen. Delays arose when marketing officials asked engineers to redesign the computer to fit changing market needs.

Meanwhile, Qureshey and Yuen dabbled in each other’s projects. Yuen even got some of the media limelight. Rival camps sprang up behind the two men.

“AST had too many chiefs,” Wong would say later, after Yuen’s departure was announced.

About three months ago, AST’s outside directors, Carmelo J. Santoro and Richard J. Goeglein, began a review of the company’s management and AST’s industry position. Santoro said the review was requested by both Yuen and Qureshey.

Last week, Santoro made his recommendations to the full five-member board, including a suggestion that AST would be more efficient with a single chief executive.

Nobody will reveal what more Santoro or his report said, but on Monday, the company announced that Yuen had resigned. Santoro was named chairman. A memo to employees made no mention of Yuen’s contributions.

Opinions vary on how much Yuen will be missed. AST shares actually rose on Wall Street this week. Analysts say it makes sense to have a single chief executive during a rocky period in the computer industry.

Yuen loyalists, however, say he was the executive who controlled day-to-day profitability and crucial inventory control. They wonder if Qureshey can carry the burden alone.

“No one co-founder was responsible for the success, but Tom contributed more than anyone else,” said Chuck Cortright, a former AST marketing executive. “He could be a tough cookie, but he had a sixth sense for the market.”