Cybersecurity firm McAfee announced on Thursday that its board of managers has appointed Peter Leav as the company’s new chief executive officer after Chris Young decided to step down.
Leav will take on the role of CEO on February 3 and he will also be appointed to the company’s board of managers. Young will stay on in an advisory role to assist with the transition, and he will become a senior advisor at TPG Capital, the private equity firm that has owned a 51 percent stake in McAfee since 2016.
Prior to joining McAfee as CEO, Leav was the CEO of BMC Software, which investment firm KKR acquired in 2018 for $8.5 billion. Leav also served as CEO and director of Polycom, executive VP and president of industry and field operations at NCR, and corporate VP and GM at Motorola. He is currently also part of the board of directors at Box and Proofpoint.
“I am delighted to be joining McAfee at this exciting time for the company and am looking forward to working with the team to pursue the significant growth opportunities ahead,” Leav said. “McAfee is one of the largest, most important cybersecurity brands in the world, with a commitment to innovation and excellence. By maintaining the forward-thinking, customer-centric approach that has come to define McAfee, I am confident that we will continue to play a very meaningful role in protecting individuals, businesses and communities from the rapidly changing cyber threat landscape.”
McAfee was acquired by Intel in 2010 for $7.68 billion and in 2014 Intel announced that McAfee would become Intel Security. Then, in 2016, Intel decided that McAfee would again be an independent company.
There has been some speculation that McAfee could file for an initial public offering (IPO). The company claims its revenue has consistently grown in the mid-single digits and its profit in the double digits.
McAfee has made significant investments in enterprise security in the past years, including in endpoint detection and response solutions and device-to-cloud capabilities.
Related: Symantec CEO Quits Unexpectedly, Stock Sinks After Missing Estimates
Related: Vulnerability in McAfee Antivirus Products Allows DLL Hijacking
Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.
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