Looking to recover from a stock-options backdating scandal that ripped apart its management team, McAfee is giving the corner office to EMC executive David DeWalt.
The anti-virus vendor said DeWalt (right), EMC's head of customer operations and content management software, will take over as CEO on April 2. He becomes McAfee's fourth chief executive in six years.
Dale Fuller, who now serves as McAfee's interim president and CEO, will resign effective April 1st, 2007 but will stick around to serve as an advisor to DeWalt. Fuller will remain on McAfee's board of directors.
DeWalt arrives in Santa Clara with a track record of managing EMC's customer operations worldwide, including Global Sales in the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific theaters. Under his watch, EMC's software business grew to one of the 10 largest software businesses in the world. He joined EMC when Documentum, a content management software specialist, was acquired in 2001 for $1.7 billion.
One of his first tasks will be to guide McAfee through the choppy waters of recovering from the stock options backdating scandal that led to the firing of former president Kevin Weiss in October 2006, along with the subsequent resignation of longtime chairman and chief executive George Samenuk.
McAfee is expected to restate several quarters of past financial results.
