A number of reports have fingered IBM executive John Swainson as the CEO-to-be at CA.

Swainson joined IBM in 1978 and has held a variety of role in sales, marketing and product development. His career with IBM started in Canada, but Swainson spent most of his time overseeing parts of IBM's software business while working in the US since 1997.

As CEO, Swainson would have the somewhat unenviable task of taking over a company in turmoil. A wide-ranging accounting scandal forced out former CEO Sanjay Kumar and led to CA paying $225m back to shareholders. CA is required to be monitored by a government watchdog for the next year and a bit.

CA has been looking for a new CEO over the past seven months with board member Kenneth Cron serving as interim chief. ®

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