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FORMER LEXMARK CEO LEAVES LEXMARK’s
BOARD
Former CEO leaving Lexmark’s board: Mann leaves with ‘mixed
emotions’
This year’s annual meeting of Lexmark
International will be the last for the man who helmed the company at its
inception.Former CEO Marvin Mann, who retired from the position in
1998, has decided to retire from his seat on the company’s board of
directors. It will be the first time since the printer maker’s inception
as a spinoff of IBM that Mann, previously an IBM executive, hasn’t been
involved in some form.”You do something like this with mixed emotions,”
Mann, 76, said last week. “I will miss being involved and miss seeing
the team and being in touch with the people.”I was involved with the
company from the first day, and that was almost 20 years ago, so it’s
time for me to move on.”Mann said he considered stepping down last year
but was persuaded to stay longer.Lexmark CEO and Chairman Paul Curlander
said Mann will be missed.”No one has contributed more to the building
of Lexmark than Marvin Mann,” he said.
Mann said that while he
will no longer be actively involved, “I will view from afar with a great
deal of interest.””They’re a great group of people,” he said of his
Lexmark colleagues. “They’ve done a terrific job in a very tough,
competitive environment over a very long period of time.”Mann said he’s
retiring from the boards of the various businesses on which he serves
but will continue to serve on several university boards.
He said
he plans to spend more time with his children and grandchildren, as well
as travelling more.”There’s no problem filling the time,” he said. “The
problem is finding enough time to do the things you want to do.”Asked
about his favorite memories of Lexmark over the years, he responded, “It
would take a book to write that.””There are so many challenges we faced
and managed our way through and so many great people who had great
ideas and were willing to work hard to change and do things in different
ways,” he said.Another director, James F. Hardymon, 75, is also
retiring. Hardymon, who led Textron Inc. and served in numerous roles at
Emerson Electric, had been a Lexmark director since 1998.
Curlander
said Hardymon has served as presiding director “for three of the last
four years during a very challenging time for Lexmark.””On a personal
level, I have greatly appreciated his experienced counsel,” Curlander
said.
With Hardymon’s retirement, only Curlander, Kathi Seifert
and Jean-Paul Montupet will be up for re-election.The company’s annual
meeting, always a low-key affair, will be at 8 a.m. April 22 at the
Embassy Suites on Newtown Pike. Proof of ownership of the company’s
stock is required for admission.
The meeting will mark the first
use of the say-on-pay advisory vote that the company agreed to adopt
last year. Stockholders had approved the proposal brought by sponsor
Amalgamated Bank in 2008 and 2009 before the company’s board agreed to
implement it after last year’s vote. The vote is non-binding and merely
reflects the stockholders’ view of whether they approve of the company’s
executive compensation policies.
The company’s proxy statement,
issued in advance of the annual meeting, showed that the company’s top
leaders saw significant pay increases in 2009, except for
Curlander.Curlander’s total pay fell below the other three top officers
because he requested, in an effort to control costs, that he not be
given a long-term incentive award in 2009.