Corel turfs senior advisers
Corporate secretary and law firm of record are among the casualties as executive departures continue
By JILL VARDY
Technology Reporter The Financial Post
Corel Corp. executives said yesterday a purge of senior advisers, including the company's legal firm, is not a sign of troubles at the software company.
The cleanout has extended to its corporate secretary and law firm of record. Corporate counsel Paul LaBarge confirmed yesterday his firm, LaBarge Weinstein, no longer represents Corel.
LaBarge subsequently resigned his seat on Corel's board of directors and his position as corporate secretary Sept. 22.
"I'm not going to make any comment about a client's affairs," he said yesterday. "If the client wants to say something, that's their business."
The Ottawa lawyer continues to be Corel chief executive Michael Cowpland's personal counsel.
Michael O'Reilly, Corel's chief financial officer, would not give reasons why the law firm was dropped in favor of McCarthy Tétrault. But he noted LaBarge Weinstein was "just one of probably a dozen law firms around the world that do work for us.
"From our perspective, it's not as big a change as you'd think."
The news follows reports of trouble between Corel and its auditor, KPMG. The Ottawa office of the accounting firm was where O'Reilly worked before he joined Corel last spring.
O'Reilly refused to comment on rumors KPMG had been fired.
Yesterday, the page on Corel's Web site that normally lists the company's auditors, legal counsel and transfer agent was blank. O'Reilly said that must be due to technical troubles.
Inside advisers at Corel have been most affected by the changes. Gwen Walmsley, the company's senior director of corporate communications, was fired Sept. 18.
Walmsley was told she wasn't being fired for performance. "I was told my professionalism was not in question. It's just that I had been a little too forthright in pushing for change, especially with Mike [Cowpland]," she said.
"I believed that we should be modest about our accomplishments and gain back credibility. Mike felt otherwise."
Corel had been slowly trying to regain the confidence of analysts since being forced to restate three quarters of revenues the previous fiscal year.
A month before Walmsley left, Greg O'Brien, the director of sales responsible for its line of software based on the Linux programming language, was also abruptly fired.
A series of departures also predicated the corporate restructuring last June that saw Corel shed 20% of its staff, mostly in its Orem, Utah research office. Corel Computer Corp. was also repatriated back into the mother company. The restructuring prompted the departure of Eid Eid, Corel Computer's president, and Corel vice-president of engineering Paul Skillen.
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