CA has gotten around to appointing a new permanent CFO after the last incumbent Robert Davis resigned in May following a brace of other top brass departures.

The (in many ways unenviable) task goes to Nancy Cooper, an IBM alumnus who most recently occupied the same role at a healthcare market intelligence firm.

CEO John Swainson said: "She has a successful track record in developing and leading high-performance teams and brings an exemplary combination of business judgment, professional skills and integrity to CA."

"I also would like to thank Bob Cirabisi," Swainson continued, "who has served as CA's interim CFO for the past three months and has done an outstanding job in heading the Finance Department during a very active period."

Active indeed. CA is still to file its 10-K annual accounts form to the SEC after a series of financial bungles and an SEC investigation into stock option chicanery.

Swainson will be hoping a permanent appointment will allow the firm to put years of accounting woes behind it. He plans to reposition CA as a genuine integrated business provider, and cast off its oft-repeated tag as "the place where good software goes to die". CA's shares were steady at time of writing.

According to a report on eWeek, CA execs are considering a cull of up to 1,000 jobs - around 5 per cent of the workforce. The cuts, rumoured to be aimed at CA's sales teams, would be a reach at profitability, which has lately eluded the company. CA refused to comment on what it described as "speculation".®