Acer On the Hunt for New Top Executives

November 30, 2013 Leave a comment

Nov 28, 2013

Acer On the Hunt for New Top Executives

EVA DOU

The return of Acer Inc.2353.TW +0.94%’s founder Stan Shih last week raised memories of two other famous comebacks in the PC industry — Steve Jobs returning toApple Inc.AAPL +2.35% and Michael Dell taking back the helm of his eponymous company. But unlike the founders of Apple and Dell, the 69-year-old Mr. Shih is not planning to keep hold of the reins at the troubled Taiwanese PC maker for long.Acer is trying to find a new president “as soon as possible” and will afterward find a new chairman by next June, said spokesman Henry Wang Thursday. After the abrupt resignation of Acer Chairman J.T. Wang and President Jim Wong last week amid a record loss, Mr. Shih has taken over both positions.

Local media in Taiwan have been floating rumors of a number of candidates that Acer may be considering for its new chairman, including co-founder George Huang, who also returned this month along with Mr. Shih.  The Acer spokesman declined to comment on possible candidates for the chairman, but said a decision will be made by the company’s board  meeting next June.

Mr. Shih has so far given few concrete details about his plans to reengineer the company, although he told local media this week that more solid plans will be announced in a month or two. He also said that unlike Mr. Dell, he has no plans to privatize Acer, and that a full comeback for the company could take three years.  The Acer spokesman confirmed Mr. Shih’s comments made to local media.

The shakeup follows two years of struggles at Acer, as demand fell for its staple product, consumer laptops, and as the company tried to catch up with rivals in new sectors like tablets and smartphones. Previously the second-largest PC maker in the world in 2009, Acer has lost ground as mobile devices replaced the small-sized “netbook” laptops that were its strength. The problems culminated in a record third-quarter net loss of 13.12 billion New Taiwan dollars (US$444 million), largely due to a write-down of unsold devices and on the declining value of the companies it had acquired, including Gateway and Packard Bell.

Earlier this month, Acer also announced a restructuring that will cut its workforce of 8,000 by 7%, which the company says will save $100 million annually.

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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