Mitek Systems has appointed a new chief executive, the day after rejecting an $380 million takeover bid from Florida-based ASG Technologies. A letter ASG sent to Mitek’s board of directors last week proposing ASG acquire the San Diego-based company asserted Mitek was facing “significant operational uncertainty and risk” following news of the imminent departure of its longtime chief executive and its chief financial officer.
(Read more about the takeover bid here, and Mitek’s rationale for turning it down, here.)
The new CEO, Max Carnecchia, was most recently chief executive at Illuminate Education, an Irvine, CA-based company that makes software for student assessment and reporting. Mitek (NASDAQ: [[ticker:MITK]]), which offers mobile document capture and digital identification verification, announced the appointment Tuesday after markets closed.
In August, Mitek said Jim DeBello, its CEO of 15 years, would leave the company at the end of the year. It also announced—in what it called an unrelated departure—its chief financial officer, Jeff Davison, would leave at the end of November.
Carnecchia’s past career stops include serving as CEO of San Diego-based Biovia, which changed its name from Accelrys after it was acquired by France-based Dassault Systèmes in 2014 for $750 million. While leading Accelrys, Carnecchia increased company revenue from $75 million to $185 million, Mitek said.
Before that, he spent eight years at content management company Interwoven, including serving as president and interim CEO at the time the company was acquired by search provider Autonomy in 2009.
