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Playing out like a bad April Fool's prank, Acer CEO Gianfranco Lanci is stepping down from his position with the company after failing to come to an agreement with Acer's board on various business priorities. Acer made the surprise announcement on Thursday, saying that Lanci's resignation was approved at a meeting of its Board of Directors and is in effect immediately.
"On the company's future development, Lanci held different views from a majority of the board members, and could not reach a consensus following several months' of dialog," Acer said in a written statement. "They placed difference levels of importance on scale, growth, customer value creation, brand position enhancement, and on resource allocation and methods of implementation."
There weren't any kind words of appreciation for Lanci's tenure as CEO nor well wishes on his future, just brutal honesty on how he and Acer's board couldn't come to terms on the company's future. Part of that could be due to Acer's stock taking its biggest weekly nosedive in nearly a decade following an announcement that its first quarter results would be significantly worse than expected. Acer previously forecast a 3 percent drop in quarter-on-quarter revenue, but adjusted that number to 10 percent last week.
According to Bloomberg, the board wasn't happy that Lanci focused his attention on trying to make Acer the world's largest laptop maker rather than setting his sights on Apple and HTC in the mobile space. Stepping in as interim CEO is Acer Chairman J.T. Wang.
"The personal computer remains the core of our business," J.T. Wang said. "We have built up a strong foundation and will continue to expand within, especially in the commercial PC segment. In addition, we are stepping into the new mobile device market, where we will invest cautiously and aim to become one of the leading players."
Lanci had been president of Acer since 2005 and helped the company overtake Dell as the world's second largest PC maker in 2009.
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