NCR Rings Up New CFO

• Intergraph Corporation, a Huntsville, Ala.-based systems integration provider, appointed Larry Laster executive vice president and chief financial officer. Laster is a member of Intergraph’s board of directors and served as Intergraph’s CFO from 1987 through 1997. He is also chief financial officer of Intergraph Public Safety Inc. (IPS), a wholly owned Intergraph subsidiary that addresses the public safety, utilities, and communications markets. He will retain CFO responsibilities for IPS.

Laster is stepping into a pretty good situation. Intergraph posted second-quarter net income of $.04 per share on revenues of $127.8 million. During the second quarter of last year, the company reported a second quarter net loss of $.07 per share on revenues of $188 million.

Then again, Intergraph may end up spending some its cash reserves on lawyers. On July 30, Intergraph filed a lawsuit in US District Court, charging Intel Corp. with patent infringement. The company filed a similar suit against Intel in 1997, but the date for the jury trial has not yet been set.

• Officials at NCR Corp., a Dayton-based customer relationship management technology provider, named Earl Shanks chief financial officer effective Sept. 10. He replaces David Bearman, who is retiring from the company at the end of the year. Bearman will work with Shanks over the coming months to help smooth the transition of financial leadership at NCR, said company managers in a statement.

  In his new role as CFO, Shanks will report to NCR’s Chairman and CEO, Lars Nyberg. He will also replace Bearman as a member of NCR’s four-person executive committee. Most recently Shanks served as NCR’s vice president of corporate finance. Prior to that, he was vice president and corporate controller, as well as treasurer and head of mergers and acquisitions. Shanks joined NCR in 1996 from Chicago-based apparel maker Fruit of the Loom Ltd., where he served as vice president and treasurer. Bearman joined NCR in 1998.

  NCR was founded in 1884 as the National Cash Register Company. In recent years, the company has gone through a series of well-publicized changes. In 1991, NCR was bought by AT&T, and subsequently renamed AT&T Global Information Services (GIS). GIS was then spun off to AT&T shareholders — but not before reverting back to its NCR Corp. moniker. In the past few years, the company has moved steadily into the enterprise applications business, and in particular, the CRM and data warehousing sectors. Last year, NCR reported revenues of around $6 billion.

• Managers at Mosaic Group Inc., a Toronto-based marketing services firm, announced that its chief financial officer, Clint Becker, has resigned. Ben Kaak, the current chief operating officer of the company’s performance solutions division, will replace Becker. Revenues for the second quarter came in at $213 million, up 93 percent from the $102.8 million in business the company did in the second quarter of 2000.
• Insurance provider AmerUs Group Inc. reported that its chief financial officer, Michael Fraizer, died on Thursday night of a massive heart attack. Fraizer was jogging near his home when he collapsed. He was 51.