Symantec CEO Thompson To Step Down
With Thompson's departure, COO Enrique Salem becomes Symantec president and CEO effective April 4, 2009.
The 59-year-old Thompson will remain chairman of Symantec's board.
Salem was appointed Symantec COO in January 2008, responsible for the company's day-to-day operations, global product development, sales and marketing. Salem's prior roles at Symantec include senior vice president of the security products and solutions group, group president of the consumer business unit and group president of worldwide sales and marketing.
Previously, Salem was president and CEO of Brightmail, an anti-spam software company acquired by Symantec in 2004.
In his 10 years at Symantec, Thompson took the company from a $632 million consumer antivirus company in 1999 to an enterprise security and storage player with more than $6 billion in sales. Perhaps his most controversial move was Symantec's controversial acquisition of Veritas software.
Thompson pitched the virtues of combining Symantec's security expertise with Vertias' storage management software, but partners and Wall Street were slow to warm to the merger.