CFO Latest To Emerge From CA's Busy Exit Door

CA Inc., still smarting from a $2.2 billion accounting scandal, today announced that Chief Financial Officer Robert Davis is leaving the software giant "under mutual agreement." The departure of Davis, who was brought in from Dell to be part of a massive financial overhaul, comes on the heels of two others and points to a company that's anything but stable.

In April, Chief Operating Officer Jeff Clarke left the company to become the CEO of Cendant Corp.'s travel arm, which runs Orbitz and Cheap Tickets Inc. Then just last week, Chief Technology Officer Mark Barrenechea split to become a director of investment firm Garnett & Helfrich Capital.

Corporate controller Robert Cirabisi will serve as interim CFO while CA looks outside company ranks for a replacement. Cirabisi has been with the company since 2000, several years before the inflated sales scandal that led to $225 million in fines, convictions of several former key executives, and a wholesale replacement of corporate leaders.

CA last month announced quarterly earnings guidance well short of analysts' expectations. The company's stock has been dropping since March, reaching its lowest point since the nadir of the fudged accounting revelations.

At every turn, there's evidence that CA's dark days aren't yet history. April also saw former CEO Sanjay Kumar and a former sales executive plead guilty to charges of fraud and obstruction of justice.

The company has until September to meet obligations under a deferred prosecution agreement or face charges of fraud and obstruction of justice. An independent compliance examiner is tracking CA's accounting, and the company is implementing a series of expensive financial controls.

"When we began the task of transforming CA, we knew that we would encounter many challenges and understood that in an undertaking of this scale and scope, changes were to be expected," CEO John Swainson said in a statement. "Eighteen months into the process, it is clear that although we still have a way to go, we have made progress."