Life After AST : Execs Who Left Have Found High Ground

By LESLIE EARNEST

March 27, 1996 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

Most of the top executives who left the flailing AST Research Inc. over the last six months have landed solidly on their feet at other Orange County companies, some with new, ego-boosting titles.

Bruce Edwards, 42, who was executive vice president and chief financial officer at the Irvine computer company, has become chief executive at nearby Milcom International Inc., which supplies power amplifiers to the wireless communications industry.

Similarly, former AST President James T. Schraith, 38, has snagged the top job at Cerplex Group Inc., a Tustin company that provides technical support and services for computer manufacturers and other high-tech businesses.

Both admit they were drawn to their current companies by the lure of becoming CEO.

“I always wanted to be one of them,” Schraith said this week, sounding like a kid at Christmastime, “and finally I got to.”

Edwards and Schraith are among seven management-level employees who have departed in recent months from the computer maker, which has been struggling to reverse a staggering financial slide. Plagued with a variety of problems, including product delays, AST has reported six consecutive quarterly losses totaling $324 million and recently warned of another quarter of heavy losses.

With the corporate ship listing, many top-level executives jumped or were nudged overboard.

Even Chairman Safi U. Qureshey, one of the founders, surrendered his chief executive title in November to Ian Diery, a former executive at Apple Computer Inc.

Some executives left AST with hefty severance packages; others received only vacation pay. Most still work in Orange County and remain linked to the computer or high-tech industry. At least three are with companies a tenth the size of AST.

“There’s a little bit of relief associated with being out of the high-tension sort of fast-paced environment” at AST, said Schraith, who took $1.47 million in severance pay when he and two other top executives were forced out last fall. “It’s challenging to be back in a smaller-company environment. In a way, it’s very reminiscent of the way it was when I was at AST in the mid-’80s.”

Others, however, said they miss the prestige of working for one of the nation’s largest PC manufacturers.

Robert McFarland, 51, who was vice president of AST’s Asia-Pacific region before joining Schraith at Cerplex, said revenue was up in Asia.

“AST was a pretty important player there,” said McFarland, now senior vice president of North American sales at Cerplex. “I kind of miss being in that limelight. There’s no question about it.”

McFarland, who spent a year in Japan and 15 months in Hong Kong, said he switched jobs mainly to return to the U.S. and iron out some family matters. Besides, he acknowledged, he just wanted to come home.

“I was really at a point where I had been out long enough,” he said, admitting that he wrestled with “a lot of second thoughts” about making the switch. “I wanted to get a little bit of my American identity back.”

Other departed AST executives include Scott A. Smith, 41, who has become vice president of marketing for Toshiba America Information System Inc. in Irvine, and Richard Ottaviano, 50, a self-employed consultant who works with senior executives on strategic planning.

James D. Wittry, AST’s former senior vice president of sales for the Americas, could not be reached for comment, but former colleagues said he is also working as a consultant.

Kirby Coryell, who was AST’s vice president of manufacturing, is now vice president of manufacturing in North America for NEC Technology in Mountain View, Calif. Coryell has been vacationing in the Bahamas, according to an assistant, and was unavailable for comment.

Several of the departed AST executives took several weeks off between jobs.

Edwards, who had been with AST 11 years, took two months off to help coach his teenage daughter’s basketball team before signing on with Milcom. “We didn’t make the playoffs,” Edwards said, “so I decided it was time to get a job.”

Schraith also took a hiatus, hiking to the bottom of the Grand Canyon with his 7- and 10-year-old daughters. He said the trek was a “physically excruciating but refreshing” experience.

Even though he now has another demanding job, “I try to get out now and see my daughter play baseball and to see them get awards at school,” he said. “I was a little too wrapped up at AST to get out and see things like that.”

McFarland, who received no severance package other than vacation pay, assumed his new duties at Cerplex two days after returning from Hong Kong.

But he was happy enough just to be home, McFarland said, and to sink his teeth into a decent enchilada. “I’m making up for it by getting Kentucky Fried Chicken and good Mexican food,” he said. “Those are big things to me.”

The fact that most of the former AST executives have made successful transitions to other jobs comes as no surprise to Irvine career consultant William K. Ellermeyer.

“The job market is so much more fluid and people are going in and out of the CEO and executive chairs at a much higher rate,” said Ellermeyer, senior vice president of Lee Hecht Harrison Inc.

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AST Executives Move On

How seven executives who left AST in the past six months have fared:

James T. Schraith

AST position: President

New company: The Cerplex Group Inc.

New position: Chief executive officer

Headquarters: Tustin

Business: Technology services outsourcing

Scott A. Smith

AST position: Vice president and general manager, desktop products

New company: Toshiba America Information Systems Inc.