Office Depot, Citrix hire new officials

Executive changes made

Two of South Florida’s prominent publicly traded companies — Citrix Systems and Office Depot — have made changes in their executive and board leadership.

Fort Lauderdale-based software company Citrix appointed a new board member, Ajei S. Gopal. He is president and CEO for Ansys, a 3-D design software maker near Pittsburgh. Previously, Gopal was operating partner at Silver Lake Partners, and was an interim president and chief operating officer at Symantec, as well as senior vice president and general manager at Hewlett-Packard.

Citrix also said, in a regulatory filing, that executive officer Carlos E. Sartorius, executive vice president for worldwide sales and services is retiring from the company.

In a press release, Citrix announced the appointment of Mark Ferrer as executive vice president and chief revenue officer. Ferrer, who reports to recently appointed CEO David Henshall, comes from SAP where he has been the chief operating officer and executive vice president of global customer operations since 2011.

Henshall was named CEO in July following the departure of Kirill Tatarinov, who stepped down in a “mutual separation decision” with the board. Henshall was Citrix’s chief financial officer. Some analysts said Citrix is pivoting from a growth mode to a profit-taking one, in making the change.

Citrix reported 2016 revenue of $3.42 billion, a 4 percent increase over the prior year.

Boca Raton-based Office Depot said Friday in a regulatory filing that its retail division president Troy Rice is leaving the company “to pursue other opportunities.” Rice is eligible for severance in connection with his termination of employment without cause, the fil-

ing said.

The Securities and Exchange Commission letter is signed by Office Depot’s new chief legal officer, David Bleisch.

Bleisch, was previously chief legal officer for Boca Raton-based security business ADT Corp. He also is executive vice president

and corporate secretary for Office Depot.

Bleisch reports directly to Gerry Smith, who was named CEO in January.

Earlier in September, Office Depot appointed Jerri DeVard as executive vice president and chief marketing officer. DeVard, who also reports to Smith, previously was senior vice president and chief marketing officer for ADT.

Office Depot is an office-supply

retailer that had annual sales of $11 billion in 2016, a 6 percent decline over the prior year. The company has been working to reinvent itself to compete with increased online competition and a declining bricks-and-mortar store sales.