The bloodletting continues at set-top box maker Pace, which today announced the head of its international business unit was being replaced and also erased the job of chief strategy officer from its organizational chart.
The latest round at the struggling company saw the head of Pace's international business unit, Mark Loughran, replaced by Shane McCarthy.
McCarthy has been with Pace for seven years and will lead a team of more than 700 employees in the company's international business in EMEA, APAC and Brazil. Revenues for that division were about $1 billion in 2011. Loughran, former head of Nokia UK, had been with Pace less than a year.
Pace CEO Mike Pulli, who took over for Neil Gaydon in December, continued his drive to simplify reporting lines in the company by trimming the CSO post. That move, which put Scott Sheldon, who has been with the company since 2009, on the shelf, wasn't included in the company's official announcement. He originally came to the company to help lead its acquisition efforts, according to the Financial Times.
Since December, the company has changed out five of its top executives. In addition to Pulli and the two moves announced today, Pace has replaced its CFO and also eliminated another role, that of COO.
Pace has had a tremulous year financially. It has issued a series of profit warnings, experienced peaks and valleys in its inventory and suffered severely when floods in Thailand interrupted the flow of hard disk drives, costing it an estimated $9.5 million. Its shares have plunged.
Pace has been the worldwide leader in set-top box sales since 2010 when it moved past Motorola and Technicolor. But that victory may prove to be a Pyrrhic one; with the emergence of connected devices, increased adoption of online video by consumers and the saturation of mature markets putting the future of some STB makers in doubt.
For more:
- see this Financial Times article (sub. req.)
- see this release
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