Departures Deal Double Whammy to Madge Networks and Fore Systems

Two major networking vendors were rocked last week by the departure of senior managers.

David Palmer-Stevens quit as European marketing director of Madge Networks and Brian Williams left Fore Systems, where he was UK country manager.

Palmer-Stevens left after Madge shifted its European marketing headquarters to the US as a cost-cutting strategy. He claimed the US-initiated programmes failed to save money because the European marketing team had to rewrite them.

?It?s become intolerable because everything it has done has failed,? Palmer-Stevens said. He insisted that his departure was amicable.

After five years at Cabletron and a year each at Xylan and Madge, Palmer-Stevens said he wanted to stay in the communications industry. He will remain at the company for the next two months training resellers to sell Madge products.

Williams? departure from Fore has sparked speculation that the manufacturer of ATM technology is downsizing its organisation as growth in the sector is sluggish.

David Butler, vice president of Europe and Asia Pacific, said: ?The industry is growing slower than we had expected with growth dropping from 120 to 50 per cent. At 120 per cent you want to hire like crazy.?

He denied other redundancies were in the pipeline, stating it had been a mutual decision for Williams to leave.