VeriSign Gets New CEO

SAN FRANCISCO - Digital infrastructure services company VeriSign(VRSN Quote) has brought back founder and chairman Jim Bidzos to replace outgoing CEO, William Roper, who resigned after just about a year in the top job.

The move is the latest in a series of management shake-ups at the troubled digital services company.

Bidzos will be the president and CEO of VeriSign on an interim basis, the company said.

Roper, whose resignation is effective June 30, had taken over from long-time CEO, Stratton Scalvos, who left unexpectedly in May 2007.

As the company's founder and initial CEO, Bidzos has served as either chairman or vice chairman of the board of directors of VeriSign since April 1995. Bidzos had left the company for a few years to go to RSA Security, now a division of EMC(EMC Quote), and returned to the role of the chairman at VeriSign in August 2007.

"VeriSign remains committed to our strategy of focusing the company on its core businesses while continuing the divestiture of all non-core operations, which will proceed as planned," said Bidzos in a statement. "We continue to expect that most sale transactions will be substantially completed this year."

At its analyst day in November, VeriSign said it will divest its businesses including communications, billing and commerce to focus on security, where it competes with companies such as Symantec(SYMC Quote) and McAfee(MFE Quote) and domain name registry services.

VeriSign also said it expects second-quarter revenue will meet or exceed current consensus estimates. Analysts are expecting earnings of 23 cents a share on revenue of $231.39 million, compared with EPS of 25 cents on revenue of $376.26 million, a year ago.

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