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, 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