Nortel to lose another executive

Nortel will lose another high-level executive, the telecom equipment company announced Tuesday. Clent Richardson, chief marketing officer at Nortel since October 2004, will leave the firm March 1.

Richardson’s departure is because of personal reasons in order to relocate his family from Toronto to the West Coast of the United States, according to a Nortel release.

Richardson, 44, joined Nortel in April 2004 as vice president of global marketing after executive positions at T-Mobile UK and Apple. He became Nortel’s CMO in October 2004 and is responsible for heading up the company’s marketing strategy and managing its brand.

There have been a number of changes at the top of Nortel this year as the company struggles to restructure its operations and put its troubled past behind it, including having to restate its 2001 to 2003 earnings.

The company took on Mike Zafirovski as its new president and CEO in the middle of November after agreeing to pay his former employer Motorola $11.5 million to settle a lawsuit. Motorola filed suit against Zafirovski alleging that his taking a job with Nortel would violate a noncompete agreement he had signed with Motorola.

Then, as November closed, Nortel replaced both its Chief Research Officer Brian McFadden and Sue Spradley, the company’s president of global services and operations.