Las Vegas – May 21, 2001 – The Board of Directors of PurchasePro® (Nasdaq: PPRO) today announced that R. Todd Bradley, a member of the board of directors, has been named chairman of the board, succeeding Charles E. Johnson, Jr., who has left the company and resigned his position on the board.
In a statement, the board of directors said, “It was Mr. Johnson’s vision and entrepreneurial spirit that created PurchasePro. It was also Mr. Johnson who recognized that there is a critical time in the successful life of every business at which the entrepreneur, the founder, the visionary, relinquishes his executive authority and remands it to a seasoned operational team. That he saw that time had arrived is with the same vision that he created the company.”
Speaking on behalf of the company in a separate statement, Richard L. Clemmer, chief financial officer, said, “We look forward to the challenges that lie ahead. In the near term, we will work to develop a strong course of action to reinvigorate the company and provide it with the best possible opportunity to achieve its ultimate objective: The achievement of strong financial returns. We will examine every element of PurchasePro’s operations, its business, its products and its markets to ensure that our course is one of maximum efficacy and possesses the dynamics to move quickly, nimbly and opportunistically. We will talk with our customers, our vendors, our employees and our shareholders to make certain they are not only fully informed of where we are going and how we are going to get there, but also of our resolve.
“To this point, we are focused on the strategy to carry out our growth objectives for PurchasePro as well as assuring that the structure, practices, and operations of our company are solidly in place and smoothly working to successfully execute our business plan. It is, however, now time to inject that strategy with the fuel that will accelerate it during this demanding period in our history, as well as this difficult economic environment.
“There is no question that PurchasePro has the right team to develop and implement that strategy. And, the right team to make it work.” In April, Mr. Clemmer, 49, was named vice chairman and chief financial officer of PurchasePro. Previously, he served as executive vice president and chief financial officer of Quantum Corporation (NYSE:DSS), the world's largest supplier of DLTtape(tm) automation systems and a leader in data protection, where he initiated and managed more than $2 billion in mergers, acquisitions, and joint ventures. Prior to joining Quantum, he was senior vice president and chief financial officer of Texas Instruments' $8 billion Semiconductor Group. While at Texas Instruments, Clemmer spearheaded the company's joint ventures with Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, Canon, Acer Computer, Kobe Steel, and the Singapore government.
About PurchasePro
PurchasePro®, www.purchasepro.com, a leader in business-to-business e-commerce, operates the PurchasePro® global marketplace, encompassing more than 155,000 businesses and powering hundreds of private-label marketplaces. PurchasePro® provides the following business-to-business e-commerce solutions: e-Procurement for corporate procurement, v-Distributor for online distributors, e-MarketMaker for Internet market makers and e-Source for strategic-sourcing.
This press release may include forward-looking statements, which are subject to the ``Safe Harbor'' created by Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. These forward-looking statements involve certain risks and uncertainties that can cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements represent only the views of certain members of management and are based on limited information available to us now, which is subject to change. We have no current plan to update these statements. Actual results may differ substantially from what we say today and no one should assume at a later date that the forward-looking statements provided herein are still valid. They speak only as of today.
For more information about these risks and uncertainties, see the SEC filings of PurchasePro Inc., including the section titled "Factors That May Affect Results" in its 10-K filing for the period ended December 31, 2000, and its 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2001, which is available from the company on request and on the Internet at the SEC's Website, www.sec.gov. Note: PurchasePro is a servicemark of PurchasePro.com Inc. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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CONTACT: PurchasePro, Las Vegas
Steven D. Stern, Vice President Corporate Communications
702.316.7000
steve.stern@PurchasePro.com
Matthew Brimhall, Manager of Public Relations
702.316.7000
matthew.brimhall@PurchasePro.com
PondelWilkinson MS&L, Los Angeles
Cecilia Wilkinson
cwilkinson@pondel.com
Robert Jaffe
rjaffe@pondel.com
310.207.9300