Angry Former Tandberg Executives

Can you think of any employee who feels so strongly about his company that he would agree to take out a mortgage on his home in order to help secure a $2 million loan for that company? That’s exactly what Hirotaka Oshima did, as MD of Tandberg Data Japan, with the company since 1997.

However, when he later moved to substitute the firm’s surplus earnings as the security, the company refused and the owners tried to transfer the money back to the parent company in Norway. He was forced to commit himself to Tandberg for another 2-3 years in order to recover the deposit, and even then promise not to work for new German competitor actidata GmbH, which he refused and for which he was subsequently fired, without warning or severance, and without reimbursement of outstanding travel expenses, according to Norwegian newspaper Finansavisen, which revealed the incident.

Legal actions are under way by Oshima, as well as by other employees of the backup company, including one main executive in Singapore, Raymond Kang, VP, sales and marketing, AsiaPac, and have been settled with former MD in Germany, Frank Roszyk, now at actidata.

This latter company is like a Tandberg-bis with 22 people and around 80% of them coming from Tandberg like CEO Gudmundur Einarsson, former CEO of Tandberg, and director of product marketing Kjell Øyvind Aasene, previously Tandberg’s VP sales and marketing.

Given the acquisition of Tandberg Data by Cyrus Capital Partners, following its bankruptcy in Norway, we can understand that the new owners would want to cut operation costs, terminating executives with higher salaries – although not former CEO Pat Clarke. However, the way it was done here seems particularly unfair, if not downright ugly.