Insider Trading: An era is ending at SupportSoft (original) (raw)

One of the more path-breaking careers in Silicon Valley will quietly come to a close this month when Radha Basu steps down as a director at SupportSoft.

While Basu was often praised for her leadership skills at the Redwood City company, she leaves behind a company that struggled to find ways to grow after the tech bust. Still, it was a lucrative tenure for Basu, who remains one of the company’s largest shareholders and has begun selling off her sizable holdings in recent months.

According to a securities filing in February, Basu owns 2.4 million shares of SupportSoft – about 5.4 percent of the company’s stock. Since last August, Basu has sold 323,800 shares at prices ranging from 4.00ashareto4.00 a share to 4.00ashareto6.46 to collect $1.8 million.

Overall, Basu has sold a total of $6.7 million worth of stock since she joined SupportSoft.

Jumping to SupportSoft was a big risk for Basu, who was born in India and worked at Hewlett-Packard for two decades before leaving in January 1999. The dot-com boom was cresting, and Basu became intrigued by a start-up that offered software to automate computer system repairs.

Basu became CEO and chairman of SupportSoft in July 1999, a job that made her a role model as one of the few female Indian chief executives in the United States. It was a role she took seriously, mentoring other women in business. One year later, the company’s stock peaked at $34 a share.

But the company was hit hard by the tech bust, and by 2003, the stock had dipped as low as $2 a share. Over the past several years, the company has seen its revenue from new licenses decrease. So in 2006, the company overhauled its top management.

That included an announcement that Basu would step down as CEO in April 2006. At the time, she said she had decided to retire to spend more time on her non-profit work. She and her husband have started the Anudip Foundation, which funds humanitarian projects in rural India. About one-third of the stock Basu still controls – 850,589 shares – is held by Anudip.

However, she agreed to stay on as a part-time employee until April 6, 2007, as well as remain on the board. In exchange, Basu continued to receive her 325,000annualsalaryplushertargetbonusof325,000 annual salary plus her target bonus of 325,000annualsalaryplushertargetbonusof243,750. And the company immediately vested all of her remaining stock options.

Over the past year, things appear to be picking up for SupportSoft under new CEO Josh Pickus. License revenue has grown for three straight quarters. And SupportSoft has entered the consumer market, launching a new online service to help people repair everything from their PC to the MP3 player over the Internet. The stock is up 34percent, from 4.20onthedayBasusteppeddowninApril2006,toFridaywhenitclosedat4.20 on the day Basu stepped down in April 2006, to Friday when it closed at 4.20onthedayBasusteppeddowninApril2006,toFridaywhenitclosedat5.64.

In February, SupportSoft announced that Basu would not run again for the board and would step down when her term expires in May.

Contact Chris O’Brien at cobrien@mercurynews.com or (415) 298-0207.