Michael Talbot, president and cofounder of marketing technology company Alterian, resigned effective Oct. 14. Research and development director and cofounder Timothy McCarthy also resigned and non-executive directors Hugh McCartney and Iain Johnston have stepped down from the board.
Guy Millward, Alterian’s group finance director, said the resignations were directly related to what he termed as recent failures, most notably the “late delivery of new products.”
“The key thing for us over the next 18 months is to establish new products in the market,” he said. “Our Alchemy product is available but not on general release. It’s late and we’ve got customer demand to meet.”
The resignations are phase one of an Alterian corporate restructuring plan, the full details of which will be announced in November, Millward said. As part of the plan, Chris Nolan, SVP of software development, will assume the responsibilities of McCarthy and Talbot’s role will be split into three lines of business for which management has yet to be appointed.
The three new positions will be EVP-level directors of database marketing, social, and Web content management. Millward said directors will be announced within “the coming days.”
Talbot and McCarthy cofounded Alterian in 1997 with former CEO David Eldridge. Eldridge resigned in April after it was announced that Alterian’s revenue fell 10% below market expectations for the year ending March 31, 2011. He was replaced in September by Heath Davies, former CEO of software and services company Sword Group.
