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Compuware Loses a Top Female Exec: White Leaves After Demotion in Rank

Posted on: Friday, 17 February 2006, 06:00 CST

By Tom Walsh, Detroit Free Press

Feb. 17--Tommi White, one of Michigan's highest-ranking female corporate officers, has left Compuware Corp. three weeks after being demoted from the Detroit computer software and consulting firm's No. 2 post as chief operating officer.

Company spokeswoman Lisa Elkin said Thursday that White's departure was by mutual agreement. Neither Compuware CEO Peter Karmanos Jr. nor White could be reached for comment.

White, a former executive at staffing firm Kelly Services Corp., joined Compuware as COO in 2001.

Karmanos had vowed to make major changes last month after Compuware reported disappointing profits for the second quarter in a row, earning $35 million, or 9 cents a share, on revenues of $305 million for the 3 months ending Dec. 31. Wall Street had expected a profit of 11 cents a share.

Those changes came Jan. 26, when Karmanos reshuffled his executive team to put White on an equal footing with two other executives, Hank Jallos and Bob Paul. Each was named president and COO of a separate operating unit -- Jallos of Compuware Products, Paul of Compuware Covisint and White of Compuware Services.

Because of White's former role as COO, Compuware was one of the top-scoring companies in October 2003 on the first Michigan Women's Leadership Index, a joint project of the Women's Economic Club and University of Michigan.

White said then that companies like Compuware with high-performance cultures "don't care whether people are green or purple or orange or women ... That's where women should seek out opportunity."

Compuware endured one of the toughest periods in its history soon after White joined the firm. After its stock price peaked around $40 a share in the technology boom of the late 1990s, Compuware's fortunes plunged during the next few years as revenues shrank and the stock fell to around $3 a share in 2002.

The following year, Karmanos and White cut their own pay and instituted health care insurance co-pays and a freeze on raises companywide. Since then, the firm's revenues have been mostly flat but Compuware has remained profitable by reining in costs. The stock has traded between $8 and $10 a share for most of the past six months. It closed Thursday at $8.40 a share, up 3 cents.

Compuware's Covisint subsidiary won a new contract this month to help General Motors Corp. manage communications with its suppliers globally. Compuware didn't put a dollar figure on the contract but said it would add about a dozen workers in Detroit and up to 60 in Frankfurt, Germany, and in Shanghai, China.

White's demotion and subsequent exit from Compuware are bound to raise again the issue of CEO succession in the minds of some company observers. Joe Nathan, Compuware's longtime president, resigned in 2003.

Karmanos, one of the company co-founders in 1973, is in his early 60s. He had successful heart bypass surgery six years ago.

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Copyright (c) 2006, Detroit Free Press

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NASDAQ-NMS:CPWR, NASDAQ-NMS:KELYB, NYSE:GM,

Source: Detroit Free Press

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