Excited about the WordPerfect/Novell merger and anticipating "great days ahead" for the combined companies, vice-president R. Duff Thompson - at the same time - did not rule out some streamlining possibilities.
"You really need to understand," Thompson said Monday after the announcement of final approval for the merger, "Bob Frankenberg (CEO of Novell) and Ad Rietveld (president of WordPerfect) are going to engineer the most efficient operation they can. That may involve eliminating some redundancy. How many is that? We don't know that now. Those are some of the questions to be answered in the next 60 to 90 days. It may even take six months to a year."Thompson said the best plan for an employee in either area of the new company would be to "do your job very, very well."
"I wouldn't even try to target anything in particular (that may be cut)" said Thompson. "We're looking at a corporate consolidation and making the most efficient operation possible."
Thompson pointed out that Novell already has a worldwide organization with plants in several areas of the United States, so transfers may be more likely than layoffs.
Combining forces with WordPerfect in the $1.8 billion deal boosts Novell to the second-largest company in the personal computer field, third-largest in the industry overall.
Thompson said Bob Frankenberg, brought in as chief executive to succeed industry giant Ray Noorda, "is absolutely a leader that every single employee in this organization can and will believe in."
"Bob is a no-nonsense kind of guy. I hope they give him the time (to accomplish his goals)," Thompson said.
With Frankenberg and Rietveld in charge, the new WordPerfect/Novell Applications Group will set standards for the rest of the industry, he said.
"I'm really excited about the opportunity. I'm very encouraged."
The merger - announced in March 1994 - has gone through without a hitch, and that in itself is a message to consumers, said Thompson.
"When we set up the time schedule for this, we basically had about a 20-day window when we felt things could happen. This is happening almost dead on, and the essential message is there's no problem," he said.
Federal Trade Commission approval was awarded Thursday afternoon, with a stockholders meeting following on Friday. The stockholders' approval confirmed the merger, which included the acquisition of the spreadsheet division of Borland International.
Stock prices for Novell, which dipped after the initial announcement of merger, have rallied slightly and held steady since Frankenberg's appointment to leadership.
At the close of market Friday, a share of Novell stock was selling at 141/2 points.
"On the day we announced the merger back in March, the stock price was obviously higher," said Thompson. "That could have been fatal to some deals, but in this particular case it wasn't a concern. We're not doing this based solely on stock prices but instead on the long-range benefits. This is the true value of what's occurred.
"You can expect great things ahead," he said, "not a lot of fluff, not a lot of promotion, just performance."