History 2003: President and CEO Mike Cannon Leaves Maxtor

Maxtor has just lost its president and CEO, one of the best if not the best in the disk drive industry. Mike Cannon, 50, left in order to replace retiring Koichi Nishimura, 64, in the same positions at Solectron, a sub-contract manufacturing company with nearly $12 billion in annual revenues, or nearly 4x those of Maxtor.

That figure alone may explain the decision of the former VP of Imprimis and SyQuest Technology, who was, before joining Maxtor in 1996, an executive at IBM Storage Systems Division.

Thus, he is leaving the storage industry, where he was particularly well-respected, and in which he has worked for nearly a quarter of a century, given that Solectron has only a minor amount of storage activity, apart from the acquisitions of storage service repair firms Sequel, in 1999, and Magnetic Data Technologies in 2002.

Replacing Dr. C.S. Park, still chairman of the company, Cannon took the reins at Maxtor 6 years ago, when the company was acquired by Hyundai, in order to get the flagging company back on track, guide it through a new IPO in 1998, and ultimately transform it into a significant enough powerhouse that it could successfully acquire Quantum’s HOD division.

Cannon’s right hand man, Paul Tufano, 49, will replace him as acting president and CEO. The latter arrived as Maxtor’s CFO in the same year as Cannon, and in 2001, was additionally appointed COO, in charge of worldwide operations and manufacturing. Tufano had previously worked for 17 years at IBM, a good number of them with Cannon, ending his term there as manager of worldwide logistics for the storage systems division.

The board of Maxtor “will work as quickly as possible to name a permanent president and CEO,” according to a company statement.

Tufano could well be the lucky candidate, particularly since Cannon, a long time friend who first brought him to Maxtor, will remain on the drive manufacturer’s board.

One curious anecdote, luckily with a happy ending, but which could have left Maxtor and Solectron today with different CEOs: according to a source at Maxtor, both Cannon and Tufano were slated to catch a flight from Boston, MA, to New York, NY, on September 11, 2001, where they were to meet with Hyundai executives in the Twin Towers. When news of the catastrophe broke, of course, their flight was cancelled.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 180 on January 2003 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.

Note: Cannon currently serves as the chairman of Seagate’s board of directors since July 2020.