Wall Street hums Zander's swan song

Analysts on Wall Street are clamoring over speculation that Motorola's CEO Ed Zander could be on his way out: Motorola's stock price rose almost 3 percent during the hours preceding the company's call about poor sales. Investors were bullish because they thought an ouster was coming, according to reports. As we noted yesterday [1], Motorola announced that its preliminary estimates of second-quarter sales will be in the range of $8.6 billion to $8.7 billion. The firm had estimated that second-quarter sales would be flat with first-quarter 2007 sales of $9.4 billion.

Some of the hubbub surrounding the Zander ouster rumors is attributable to activist investor Eric Jackson, who published a statement online called "Motorola Plan-B," which calls for the CEO's dismissal or resignation. Motorola's response to the speculation: "The current management team--[CEO] Ed [Zander], COO Greg Brown, and CFO Tom Meredith--are working on restoring profitability for mobile devices and moving forward with a strategy to fix the business."

For more on the speculation:
- read this BusinessWeek article [2]