Symantec is the next company to catch up on the recent trend and announce that its business is splitting.
According to the announcement, following a unanimous decision by Symantec’s Board of Directors, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company is planned to be divided into 2 brands: one business focused on security and the other focused on information management.
Michael Brown will reportedly continue to be the CEO for Symantec, with Thomas Seifert as chief financial officer. For the new information management business, the President and Chief Operating Officer at Quantum, John Gannon has been named as the General Manager, while Don Rath, Symantec vice president will be the acting CFO.
Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that, citing sources close to the matter, the company is in advanced talks of splitting its business into 2 divisions. Brown was reportedly supporting the idea of splitting and one of the sources even claimed that the 2 businesses might be offered to be taken over by a competitive firm such as HP and EMC.
The shift comes after Symantec announced that it would converge its Norton range of products into one singe security suite. Symantec Senior Vice President for Information Security, Brian Dye even said that the company doesn’t hope to generate revenue from ‘antivirus,’ which he claimed to be ‘dead.’
Bloomberg also stated that the company had the idea to split up its businesses earlier but gave it up due to several reasons, and that the company has also hired JP Morgan Chase & Co to help it find strategies to defend itself against activist shareholders as it has been having financial issues.
