Intel’s CEO of five years, Brian Krzanich, has stepped down according to the company’s own press release. Surprisingly, this has nothing to do with Intel’s security woes or Krzanich’s selling of stock just before the news of those security woes broke.
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According to Intel, Krzanich resigned after it was discovered he was having a relationship with an Intel employee. Per the press release:
Intel was recently informed that Mr Krzanich had a past consensual relationship with an Intel employee. An ongoing investigation by internal and external counsel has confirmed a violation of Intel’s non-fraternization policy, which applies to all managers. Given the expectation that all employees will respect Intel’s values and adhere to the company’s code of conduct, the board has accepted Mr Krzanich’s resignation
Krzanich, who is married with two daughters, has been the CEO of Intel since 2013, but he’s been with the company for more than three decades in total. He first joined as an engineer, before managing Intel’s supply chain, and then becoming COO in 2012 and CEO in 2013. To his employees he was known as “BK”.
As Intel searches for a new CEO Krzanich will be replaced by Intel’s chief finance officer Bob Swan in the interim. Swan is very much not an engineer. Instead, the incoming CEO, before joining Intel in 2016, worked as a partner at an investment firm. Swan was also CFO of eBay and spent 15 years in finance roles at General Electric.
The major leadership changes follow months of bad press for Intel, starting with the reveal of massive security flaws in its CPUs at the beginning of the year. Those flaws are now known as Spectre and Meltdown. Krzanich himself became personally embroiled in the security scandal just a day later when it was noted that he’d sold nearly $US11 million ($15 million) in company stock just months before the security flaws were revealed and around the same time he would have learned of the flaws.