• PMC-Sierra
has announced that vice president and chief financial officer Alan Krock will take on the role of vice president of corporate affairs. The date of his transition depends on when a permanent or interim CFO is hired. If the hiring does not happen by March 15, 2007, Krock will step down at that time. Before joining PMC-Sierra, Krock was the vice president and CFO at Integrated Device Technology, where he also held the title of vice president and corporate controller. He joined IDT after working as corporate controller for RohmUSA and a senior manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers.
• Cyberonics has announced that Pamela Westbrook has stepped down as chief financial officer and vice president of finance and administration. She has agreed to serve as a consultant during the transition. Westbrook’s resignation and that of the medical device manufacturer’s CEO and president were announced at the same time that the company reported discovering incorrect measurement dates tied to the financial reporting of a number of option grants between 1999 and 2003. John Riccardi has been named interim CFO. Riccardi has served as the director of Cyberonics’ financial planning and analysis for the past year. He previously worked for eight years in several positions at Johnson & Johnson.
• Midas Inc. has promoted chief financial officer William Guzik to executive vice president. He had held the title of senior vice president since 2001. Before joining the automotive service company in 1999, Guzik was finance chief of Delray Farms, and he spent 11 years in the audit practice of PricewaterhouseCoopers.
• Apollo Group has appointed Joseph D’Amico as interim chief financial officer. Earlier this month, the higher education company announced that Kenda B. Gonzales, its CFO and treasurer, resigned because of personal reasons in the same press release acknowledging that its internal investigation into the process of granting and documenting stock options has “discovered various deficiencies.” D’Amico is a senior managing director with FTI Palladium Partners, an interim management company.
• Onetime CFO Frank Bramanti has taken over as chief executive officer of HCC Insurance Holdings, following the resignation of Stephen Way. Bramanti has served on the company’s board of directors since 1980, and worked in various capacities, including CFO and interim president, from 1980 through 2001. HCC made the announcement, along with the resignation of its general counsel, in a press release acknowledging that it used incorrect measurement dates for certain stock options grants from 1995 through 2006.
• TheLadders.com has hired Robert Price as chief financial officer. He joins the online service for highly compensated jobs after serving as Buy.com’s CFO. He also held the positions of senior vice president and CFO at PairGain Technologies, and corporate controller at Triconex Corp.
• AMB Property Corp. has announced that Michael Coke is retiring as chief financial officer in 2007, likely when the second quarter ends and a new CFO has been transitioned. AMB owns and develops industrial real estate.
• Ignis Petroleum Group has appointed Shawn Clift as chief financial officer. Clift has more than 20 years’ experience in finance and accounting, most recently as vice president of finance at CDX Gas. She began her career as an accountant, and held the position of controller for 10 years for two Denver-based private oil and gas companies. Timothy Hart had been filling in as a consulting CFO.
• Gateway International Holdings has hired Stephen Kasprisin as chief financial officer. Kasprisin was previously the COO and CFO of Naturade Inc., and has worked as a financial consultant with Cerius Consulting Group, CFO of BMK Inc., and CFO of Acorn Products Inc. Gateway manufactures advanced machined components.
• TII Network Technologies has appointed Jennifer Katsch to vice president of finance, treasurer, and chief financial officer. Previously, for less than a year, Katsch served as the senior manager of financial reporting for NBTY Inc. She also worked at KPMG for 10 years, most recently serving as an audit senior manager.
• Semtech Corp. has announced that Emeka Chukwu is the semiconductor company’s new vice president and chief financial officer. Alan Bennett, who has been serving as interim CFO since November 7, will continue to serve as vice president of accounting and tax and acting corporate controller. Chukwu most recently served as vice president of finance at Intersil. He was also the controller at the manufacturer for four years, and served as the corporate controller of Elantec Semiconductor.
Activant Solutions has hired Brian Agle as its new senior vice president and chief financial officer. Formerly, Agle was CFO and vice president for global field operations at Novell, and he also worked at Ernst & Young.