Xerox taps IBM veteran Zimmerman as CFO

Franklin Paul

NEW YORK: Office equipment maker Xerox Corp., which has been struggling to

return to profitability, on Tuesday named a retired International Business

Machines Corp. executive as its chief financial officer, a job that was open

nearly eight months.

Lawrence Zimmerman, 59, on June 1 will join the Stamford, Connecticut,

company, whose name is synonymous with photocopies. He retired from IBM in 1998

after 31 years at the world's top computer maker.

Zimmerman's hiring comes nearly two months after Xerox settled charges that

it inflated earnings and defrauded investors. Salomon Smith Barney analyst

Jonathan Rosenzweig said the appointment "perhaps will bolster confidence

that the accounting troubles, which may have made the CFO search so challenging,

are now largely behind the company."

Rosenzweig also said he was encouraged by Zimmerman's resume. "He

clearly has experience at a large, well respected technology company, which is

global in nature and harbors a financing business," Rosenzweig said.

Zimmerman joined IBM as an accountant in 1966 and went on to hold senior

finance positions, including corporate controller. From 1996 to 1998, he was the

senior finance executive for the server division, which at that time was one of

the company's largest units.

"Larry has a proven track record as an effective financial executive

with balanced experience in global operations, strategic planning, accounting,

and internal controls," Xerox chairman and chief executive Anne Mulcahy

said in a statement.

Zimmerman steps into an office that has been empty since Xerox's former CFO,

Barry Romeril, retired at the end of 2001. The company announced his resignation

in early October. For much of the last two years, Xerox has undertaken a massive

restructuring, shedding units, cutting staff and selling assets. Along the way,

federal regulators probed the company about possible accounting irregularities.

Xerox paid a record $10 million penalty to settle charges with the US

Securities and Exchange Commission. Under the agreement, it neither admitted nor

denied any wrongdoing.

As a result of the settlement, the company will restate earnings for 1997 to

2001 and has been granted additional time to file its annual report and

first-quarter financial statement. According to published reports, Romeril, who

joined Xerox in 1993, and former Xerox CEO Paul Allaire, have attracted the

scrutiny of the SEC in the wake of the accounting flap.

(C) Reuters Limited.