Siemens CIO Lovell-Read resigns

Gordon Lovell-Read has stepped down as CIO of engineering and electronics giants Siemens today, the German company has announced in a letter. Lovell-Read was with the company for six years.

In a statement from its Frimley U.K. office Siemens said Lovell-Read has "indicated his desire to stand down to pursue other interests outside of Siemens." Lovell-Read will depart the company on May 31, a decision they describe as an "amicable parting of ways".

"He leaves behind a strong, healthy capability to underpin the plans of Siemens, a lasting legacy of successful IT modernization and the impressive integrated technology experience of the Frimley U.K. headquarters, which owes much to his personal vision," Siemens said in a statement.

Lovell-Read joined Siemens in 2002. No CIO was in place and the previous incumbent had only lasted two month, he told CIO magazine last year. On arrival he became responsible for an organization with 200 individual sites, each with its own IT team. Rolling his sleeves up, Lovell-Read tripled IT spending to centralize systems, replace PeopleSoft with SAP and turn the IT department into a business service delivery organization.

Lovell-Read was not a CIO focussed on running an IT department though, "I said to them, if you are after an IT director, I'm not your man. If you want someone for a significant change role, then I'm interested," he said to CIO. "I wasn't the most qualified IT person, but I understand the value that IT brings the business. I told them it doesn't come without wreckage," he said.

He joined Siemens after a 17-year career at HP, where he met both founders.

Siemens has been navigating a rocky road of late, culminating in a corruption investigation in Germany. Last January the European Commission fined Siemens £275 million for its leading involvement in a price fixing cartel. Siemens was found to be fixing prices in the gas-isolated switchgear systems market between October 2002 and April 2004. The company also launched a new managed services company last year, which provides IT services to the BBC.