IBM Corp. (NYSE:IBM), locked in a court battle with Dave Johnson, its former vice president for corporate development, has filed a complaint charging him with misusing company resources for personal benefit, according to court documents cited in
Reuters and
Bloomberg reports.
IBM is suing Johnson for violating a noncompete agreement -- which he argues is invalid -- by accepting a job leading M&A activities for Dell Inc. (NASDAQ:DELL). According to the court documents, the company learned in discovery that beginning in at least 2005, Johnson used company resources to lay the groundwork for a venture capital firm that would invest in technology startups. The company says his plans included recruiting an additional IBM exec to work at the firm, JSJ Capital.
Hard to pass judgment without hearing the fuller story from both sides, but a couple of thoughts come to mind. The first is the timeline. Johnson, a 28-year IBM employee, got the corp dev job in 2001 and had already done a lot with it by 2005, which is when he was asked to sign the noncompete now in dispute. It's not clear if there was an earlier one, but on this one, Johnson this week told the court he
intentionally signed it incorrectly.
Now we learn that also in 2005 he did some work toward striking out on his own. Would his VC fund, if launched, have competed with IBM? Maybe, maybe not. Unlike, say, Intel Corp. (NASDAQ:INTC), IBM does little investing in the venture realm, preferring instead to collaborate with outside VCs and get them to invest in startups that work within the tech ecosystem it's trying to foster.
Did Johnson misuse company resources to lay the groundwork for JSJ? Perhaps we'll learn more in court. What seems safe to say now is that striking out on one's own in this fashion is behavior more associated with Silicon Valley companies than with Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM.
In any event, it's hard not to think that this will end in a settlement of some kind -- one that lets Johnson get on with his career, while IBM's big M&A organization carries out its mission under the
new chief, Elias Mendoza. -
Kenneth Klee
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