Symantec COO and president Michael Fey in what he called a “difficult day” on his social media account.
“Today is an exciting and difficult day. As I have chosen to embark on the next stage of my career”, Fey wrote in a post on his LinkedIn page. “While this was a difficult decision to leave this awesome team, I am very excited about the future.”
As part of Fey’s separation agreement with Symantec signed Wednesday, he has agreed to forgo severance benefits, unvested equity awards, and cash bonus payments.
In exchange, Symantec has agreed to extend the exercise period for Fey’s vested stock options until February 2020 or the final exercise data for such options.
The audit committee of Symantec’s board of directors in September identified “certain behaviour inconsistent” with the company’s code of conduct and related policies, and referred the matter to the company for appropriate action. However, no employment actions with respect to any of Symantec’s highest-ranking executives have been recommended as a result of the investigation.
Fey said that his departure was not linked at all to the investigation and that the lack of severance was due to the fact that he resigned. Symantec declined to comment on whether Fey’s departure was connected to the findings from the investigation.
Fey has been with Symantec since its acquisition of cybersecurity outfit Blue Coat Systems in 2016, where he held a similar role.
CEO Greg Clark – who also moved from Blue Coat as part of that acquisition – has taken over Fey’s position as president. Art Gilliland, former CEO and president of hyperconverged specialist Skyport, is now EVP and GM of enterprise products at Symantec, while Marc Andrews remains in his role as VP of worldwide sales.
Fey described on LinkedIn his departure from the security vendor as a “difficult day”.
Gilliland headed up Skyport from 2015 until it was purchased by Cisco earlier this year.
He spent six years at Symantec overseeing its information security division from 2006 to 2012 after serving as general manager of enterprise security products at HP.
Clark welcomed Gilliland’s return to the company.
“Art is a widely respected executive both inside and outside our organisation, and we are excited to welcome him back to Symantec,” he said.
“We look forward to benefitting from his extensive enterprise security expertise and years of end-point and network experience in his new role.
“Additionally, I am very pleased to have Marc overseeing our enterprise security worldwide sales organisation to ensure seamless continuity.
“Marc’s record of execution as a leader of enterprise security will continue to serve Symantec well.”
