* What Hovespian gets if he doesn't get the CEO nametag
Many people might question Ron Hovsepian’s wisdom in taking the COO job at Novell. After all, his predecessors, Stewart Nelson as COO, Eric Schmidt as CEO and Chris Stone as, well, “heir apparent” under Jack Messman didn’t fare very well. But Hovsepian may be dumb like a fox.
Part of the agreement to take on what could be an onerous position (rather than an honor filled one) was a rather odd set of benefits added to Hovsepian’s employment contract.
It seems that, in the event he doesn’t succeed Messman as CEO of Novell, Hovsepian would get additional benefits on leaving the company which would include: payment by Novell of one-and-a-half times his salary, a prorated bonus for the year of termination, a year’s health coverage, accelerated vesting of restricted stock and options, and freedom from non-compete requirements! (Read the details in the Boston Business Journal) All told, that could have a value of an extra $1.5 million. For that kind of guarantee, I might even be tempted to work as Messman’s whipping boy.
Someone who didn’t have those benefits, but jumped ship anyway was SuSE Linux founder Hubert Mantel. In an unusual move, he announced his resignation via a Linux e-mail discussion list, stating (according to the Salt Lake Tribune): “This is not [any] longer the company I founded 13 years ago.” Mantel is the third prominent SuSE principal to leave Novell this year, following former SuSE President Richard Seibt who exited in May, and Petra Heinrich, who stepped down last month from Novell’s German operations as both chief of Europe, Middle East and Asia operations for Novell and SuSE channel development. All but one of the SuSE executives (the exception is co-founder Thomas Fehr) have now left Novell.
Turmoil and turnover seems to continue to be the principle past time of the former networking leader and that’s probably not good news for network managers. Some of the speculation surrounding these moves is even a bit more troubling, and I’ll look at that in the next issue.
