It's time to bid adieu to the year 2008, the year which witnessed the farewells of some of the biggest names in the technology world -- some of the marking the end of an era.
While most of these were ceremonious exits with some moving to take up their passions or philanthropy, others in pursuit of greener pastures. There were also some unceremonious exits, where some CEOs were made to resign penalising them for falling revenues and constant battering of their company's stocks at the bourses.
Here's looking into some of the most high-profile exits of 2008.
Arun Sarin, Vodafone 
| One of the most successful CEOs of British telecom giant Vodafone, Arun Sarin, quit the company in the July 2008 to don a new challenge. During his five year tenure at the world's largest mobile firm, Sarin is credited for acquiring a controlling stake in one of India's biggest mobile phone companies, Hutchison Essar. Under him Vodafone posted group revenue of 35.5 billion pounds for the year ending March 31, an increase of 14.1 per cent, and organic growth of 4.2 per cent. This came in marginally higher than market consensus, provided by the company, of 35.2 billion to 35.4 billion pounds. Under Sarin, Vodafone expanded aggressively into emerging markets, including Romania, the Czech Republic and Turkey. Sarin visited India before his exit along with his successor to participate in Vodafone-Essar board meeting, triggering speculation that he may join Tatas, but officials of the Indian conglomerate debunked any such report. Post-exit Sarin planned a trekking trip to Himalayas before settling in California. Recently, Sarin, 53, who quit Vodafone at the pinnacle of his career, was speculated to be the most sought-after contender for the position of Yahoo CEO, after the Jerry Yang's exit. Sarin, however, said he was not keen on the position. Sarin is looking at alternative roles at other US public companies as well as at a private equity firm, the Financial Times wrote recently. The India-born US citizen is an IIT Kharagpur alumnus and has an MBA degree from University of California, Berkley. |
| This was surely the biggest farewell of 2008. The exit of Bill Gates marked an end of era. Gates retired from Microsoft, the company he co-founded with college-friend Paul Allen in 1975. In June, Gates quit as full-time chairman and software architect of the world's largest software company to work full-time at his charitable organisation Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Gates will remain the company's non-executive chairman. A Harvard College drop out, Gates has been a permanent fixture in the Forbes Richest people list, holding the numero uno slot for 15 years in a row between 1993 and 2007. In 2008, Gates was topped by investor Warren Buffett and Mexico's telecom tycoon Carlos Slim in the world's wealthiest list. Bill Gates' key creation is Microsoft, a company with sales of $51 billion as of June 2007 with 78,000 employees across 105 countries. Almost 90 per cent of the estimated 1 billion computers (desktop and laptop) in the world run on Microsoft's Windows and Office. The company has products across the layers network, operating system, database, middleware, application software. Gates departure comes at a time when Microsoft is engaged in an escalating rivalry with Google and other competitors who are using the internet to chip away at its software dominance. During his recent visit to India, Gates launched a major initiative for India’s public healthcare with a special focus on eradicating polio. |
| After a rocky tenure at Yahoo, co-founder Jerry Yang stepped down as chief executive this November. Among the Silicon Valley dotcom billionaires, Yang was named CEO in June 2007 after Terry Semel exit. As CEO, Yang struggled to turn around the company's dwindling fortunes. The rejection of Microsoft offer and a failed advertising deal with Google marred his brief tenure. Earlier this year, Yang rejected a $33 per share offer by Microsoft for Yahoo worth a total of more than $47 billion. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer later withdrew the offer after Yang sought $37 per share. The negotiating breakdown triggered a shareholder revolt led by billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who called for Yang's ouster in July. Since then Yahoo has been trading at between $10-12 a share. With a fortune estimated at $2.23 billion, some shareholders accused Yang of putting his personal affection for the company he created over the interests of its shareholders. After squandering the opportunity to sell to Microsoft, Yang tried to boost Yahoo's profit by forging an advertising partnership with Google. But this backup plan too fell when Google walked away from the deal to avoid a court battle with the US Justice Department, which concluded that the partnership may throttle competition in the online advertising market. |
| Indian engineering whizkid Sanjay Jha left Qualcomm CDMA Technologies (QCT) group as COO and president this year to join beleaguered US telecom major Motorola as CEO of Mobile Devices. At Motorola, Jha holds a key task to pull the American cellphone pioneer which slipped to the fourth position in global handset sales and the downslide has been quite sharp. What top's Jha's priorities is reversing the fortunes of the company’s loss-making handset business -- comprising over one third of Motorola’s total business worth $36.6 billion. Forty five-year-old Jha started as a senior engineer at Qualcomm VLSI (very large scale integration) group in 1994 and was promoted as senior vice-president of engineering in 1998. He was elevated as the president of QCT in 2003 when the chipset and software division was started at Qualcomm. For the past five years, this division of Qualcomm has been ranked among the world's largest fabless semiconductor producers, and was rated as being ahead of the leader Texas Instruments last year. Qualcomm had sold its own CDMA cell phone business to Kyocera in February 2000. |
| British Telecom Group, one of the largest telecommunications companies in Europe, saw the departure of its CEO Ben Verwaayen in the month of April. Having served BT for almost six years, Verwaayen headed back to the US to take up a position with a venture capital firm. Verwaayen joined BT in January 2002 after quitting his job from US equipment vendor Lucent. During his tenure at BT, Verwaayen initiated a complete broadband overhaul of BT's aging infrastructure. He mended fences with Ofcom, the UK's version of the FCC. Fifty-six year old Dutch national was also awarded an honorary knighthood for services to the communications industry. Verwaayen helped BT buy a slew of US-based companies including Infonet, Radianz, Counterpane and INS pushing the telecom giant into a number of emerging markets. Ian Livingston, who was chief executive of BT Retail, succeeded Verwaayen. | |
| In one of the most sensational and controversial exits of the year, Samsung Group chairman Lee Kun-hee, resigned following an indictment on tax evasion charges after a counsel investigation. Known to be the most powerful Korean tycoon, Lee was charged with $133m tax evasion and breach of trust during his 20-year tenure at Samsung. Lee was also charged with damaging the interest of other shareholders. He was accused of forcing Samsung subsidiaries to sell shares to his son at unfairly low prices. However, the company was cleared of the most serious allegation that it raised money to bribe influential citizens and ministers in its native South Korea. Joining Lee in stepping down were Vice Chairman Lee Hak-soo and Lee Jae-yong, the chairman's son and heir apparent to the Samsung throne. Nine other senior executives also left Samsung following the charges. Sixty six-year old Lee is credited of having built $160-billion Samsung Group which is Korea Inc's pride, accounting for roughly 21 per cent of the country's total exports. |