Former CFO Anderson steered Apple through some rough times
The CFO's in all these companies being investigated will bear a brunt of the heat. They're the ones that are responsible for the accounting department and are the experts in the area that other relied upon. Clearly, 100+ CFO's didn't collude with CEO's and their boards to commit these "crimes". Aside from a few who did commit outright fraud, most were simply using the generally acceptable practices of the day. It's not even clear that they'll find most of what was done wrong, just wrongly reported.
BTW, Anderson is an alumni of Whittier College, which is also well known for a president that ended his career on a bad note...
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Former CFO Anderson steered Apple through some rough times
Carolyn Said, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, October 5, 2006
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Fred Anderson garnered a reputation as a buttoned-down guy with a steady eye on the bottom line during his eight-year tenure as chief financial officer at Apple Computer Inc.
After leaving that post in June 2004, Anderson joined Apple's board of directors. On Wednesday, he resigned as a director while Apple disclosed that it had found 15 instances of stock-options grants from 1997 to 2002 that were backdated.
Apple is among more than 100 companies caught up in investigations into whether they manipulated stock options to sweeten executives' compensation.
Anderson came to Apple in 1996 as executive vice president and CFO during a low point for the computer-maker as it struggled with shrinking profit margins, dwindling market share and a plunging stock price.
Apple became re-energized once Steve Jobs returned to lead the company he had co-founded. Anderson was considered pivotal to that turnaround. Jobs relied heavily on his acumen and investors found his steady presence at Apple reassuring.
"Steve had great confidence in Fred Anderson, so he let Fred deal with Wall Street for the most part," longtime Apple board member Edgar Woolard Jr. said in an interview with BusinessWeek this year.
Before joining Apple, Anderson was chief financial officer of Automatic Data Processing of Roseland, N.J. While there, he oversaw several key acquisitions and dozens of consecutive quarters of growth in sales and profit.
Previously, Anderson had worked at minicomputer-maker MAI Basic Four Inc. of Irvine. During 13 years, he rose to become CFO and president. He also spent five years at Coopers & Lybrand and three years in the U.S. Air Force.
After leaving Apple in 2004, Anderson and several partners, including rock star Bono and financier Roger McNamee, co-founded Elevation Partners, a Menlo Park private-equity fund named for a U2 song.
He serves as an Elevation managing director, along with Bono, McNamee and others. The fund has raised $1.9 billion for investments in media and entertainment. In August, Elevation bought a minority stake in Forbes publishing and media company. Its other investments are in real estate Web site Move.com and game developers Pandemic Studios and BioWare.
Anderson is on the boards of eBay and Move and serves as audit chair for VG Holding Corp., according to the Elevation Web site. He holds a bachelor's degree from Whittier College and a master's in business administration from
UCLA.
E-mail Carolyn Said at csaid@sfchronicle.com. |
