History 2004: Maxtor in Financial and Human Trouble

Struggling Maxtor abruptly severed its president and CEO since 2003, Paul Tufano, who has also left the company’s board. He was also acting CFO since the departure of 2 successive CFOs, Robert Edwards last March, then Michael Bless in October.

The company’s chairman C.S. Park, 56, is currently filling in at the company’s top posts, not for the 1st time, having served as acting CEO already in 1995 and 1996.

Two days after Tufano’s resignation, the company recruited a COO no one anticipated, Michael Wingert, 44, who had spent ten years at Maxtor, leaving the company at the level of VP and GM, to become COO and then CEO last September of another HDD maker, start-up Cornice. Scarcely 2 weeks after that, the company announced that it had found its 3rd CFO of the year, Duston Williams, 46, who spent 13 years with competitor Western Digital, including nearly 4 years as its CFO.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 203 on December 2004 from the former paper version of Computer Data  Storage Newsletter.

Note: Tufano was later president and CEO of Benchmark Electronics, Inc., from 2016 to 2019.