Edgar Masri was removed as chief executive of Marlborough-based 3Com Inc. and immediately replaced by Robert Mao, a fluent Mandarin speaker who will be based in China, which the firm sees as its biggest market.

The management shuffle ！ which comes a month after a proposed $2.2 billion buyout of 3Com was scuttled because of concern over a Chinese company¨s role ！ also brings in Ronald Sege to the new position of chief operating officer and as president of the company, effective Wednesday.

Eric Benhamou will remain chairman of 3Com¨s board, company spokesman Kevin Flanagan said.

Stir It Up

Mao, 64, who became 3Com¨s executive vice president for corporate development in August 2006, left seven months later, though he retained a spot on 3Com¨s board.

＾It was a decision by the board of directors to make a change in the senior executive area, and essentially they decided to replace Edgar Masri with Bob Mao as our CEO, with Ronald Sege as our president and COO,￣ Flanagan said.

Mao, who has worked in China for Nortel Networks, will oversee 4,000 employees in China, a growing market for 3Com¨s switches, routers and other gear to help data networks run efficiently.

Sege, 51, most recently president and CEO of Tropos Networks Inc., a wireless broadband network provider, will focus on 3Com¨s operations outside China. He¨ll work from company headquarters Marlborough.

3Com announced a proposal in September for Boston-based private equity firm Bain Capital Partners to lead a buyout of 3Com. The deal would have given Huawei Technologies of China a minority stake in 3Com ！ a prospect that raised the ire of U.S. lawmakers. The controversy led to a collapse of the deal.



Source:AP

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