Transition Teams Stand Out Among 2007 OC 50

Some notable transitions played out among this year’s OC 50,the Business Journal’s annual yearbook of the most influential people here.

This section, starting on page 29, has a handful of combined entries that signal changings of the guard. Two shifts involved longtime chief executives who now are chairman alongside their handpicked successors. A third includes a seasoned real estate executive stepping into the shoes of another who’s retiring.

Paul Folino, a longtime OC 50 fixture, now sits alongside new Emulex Corp. Chief Executive Jim McCluney as the company’s executive chairman.

The changeover, which played out late last year, was an orderly succession long in the works. But that didn’t diminish its significance.

Folino, Emulex’s formative chief executive since 1993, is one of the county’s most prominent figures. He’s built Emulex into Orange County’s fourth-largest technology company with a recent market value of $1.6 billion.

Along the way, Folino’s become one of the county’s biggest stars, giving money and his name to the arts, education and politics.

Now McCluney’s putting his mark on Emulex, a maker of electronics for data storage networks. The company’s president and chief operating officer since 2003, McCluney came to Emulex after it bought his publicly traded Vixel Corp. in 2003.

Along with Broadcom Corp.’s Scott McGregor, Ingram Micro Inc.’s Greg Spierkel and Gateway Inc.’s Ed Coleman, McCluney is part of a new breed of tech executives here. For the most part, they’re newcomers to OC who’ve cut their teeth elsewhere or at global operations of their own companies.

They’ve joined the ranks of the county’s longtime tech bosses, including QLogic Corp.’s H.K. Desai, Broadcom’s Henry Samueli, Kingston Technology Co.’s David Sun and John Tu as well as Folino.

We’re not forgetting Dwight Decker. He’s a special case. At this time next year, his OC 50 entry stands to be a joint one with him as chairman alongside a new chief executive of Newport Beach-based chipmaker Conexant Systems Inc.

Decker said in March he plans to retire and stay as non-executive chairman after a replacement is hired later this year.

Pacific Life

OC 50′s other big transition team: Tom Sutton and Jim Morris of Pacific life insurance Co. in Newport Beach.

We included both men in last year’s OC 50 in anticipation of a change that formally played out this year. They appear together again this time around, though Morris now is chief executive and Sutton is chairman after 17 years running the company.

In the steady world of Pacific Life, the change is epic.

Morris, Sutton’s handpicked successor, is the 14th boss in life insurer’s 139-year history. Morris, formerly chief operating officer, has trained with Sutton for some time now. Both have been with Pacific Life all their careers.

There was one other notable transition. It was in OC 50′s real estate group,typically one of the most unchanged categories.

There’s a new face in what we fondly refer to as The Irvine Company “troika”,a triple listing of the company’s top executives after Chairman Donald Bren, who has his own entry.

Rick Gilchrist, former Maguire Properties Inc. co-chief executive, now holds the president’s spot for the Irvine Co.’s investment properties group, which oversees its office, shopping, apartment and resort operations.

Clarence Barker, the investment properties group’s longtime leader, is stepping back to become an adviser to Bren and to work on the renovation of The Resort at Pelican Hill.

Barker has held a place in OC 50 since 2001. He’s been with the Irvine Co. for 20 years, starting as vice president of development. The transition is part of a bigger one playing out at the company, which is seeing less development than in past decades and more of a focus on managing buildings. Gilchrist, having come from big Los Angeles-based landlord Maguire, fits that bill.

Other changes played out this year.

The tech group has three new faces.

Gateway’s Coleman took the place of the computer’s interim boss a year ago, Rick Snyder, and Wayne Inouye before that.

John Coyne becomes Lake Forest-based Western Digital Corp.’s third entry in recent years, having taken over as chief executive of the disk drive maker from Arif Shakeel and Matt Massengill before that.

And welcome Gil Amelio. The former National Semiconductor Corp. boss and short-lived Apple Inc. chief ousted by Steve jobs debuts in OC 50 as the new head of Jazz Semiconductor and its parent company.

Gone from last year’s tech section is Victor Tsao of Irvine-based Cisco-Linksys LLC after he changed roles for parent company Cisco Systems Inc. a year ago. Cisco-Linksys’ J. Michael Pocock, senior vice president, general manager, is an honorable mention.

Pierre Andr