Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
remove the powers and duties of the president - preventing him
from supervising
MCM
's operations - and the appointment of
Wallace as managing director constituted, from a legal point of
view, wrongful dismissal from his presidential office. Further-
more, his pockets were still full of controlling shares and he
could use shareholders' meetings as a new battlefield. In a fast-
moving high technology sector such as computing, extended
delays in product development could be devastating. The little
window of opportunity that was left to
MCM
in mid-1974 was
shrinking fast, and the company simply could not afford an idle
mode of operations, chewing on what was left of the bank line
of credit in anticipation of some political resolve. Finally, the
replacement of Kutt with the inexperienced Wallace could not
clear the employees' discontent with their financial or corporate
standing, nor remove the production bottlenecks; it could only
endanger the deals with the distributors, the company's only
hope for survival.
It is of limited historical value to pose questions such as
whether Kutt could have prevented the 16 July disaster, whether
he could have effectively addressed the employees' discontent,
or have found ways to work more effectively with the venture
capital group. In the end, in the most crucial moment, he found
himself isolated both on the board of directors and within the
managerial group of
MCM
. He wasn't getting adequate legal
and corporate advice to help him properly assess and act upon
the actions taken by the outside shareholders' group. If he were
to survive and fight back, he would have to rebuild the neg-
lected alliances - and fast.
At the beginning of 1974, there were still a number of hardware-
related problems that
MCM
had to address before starting the
