It was kind of a perfect horror story. When John Swainson joined CA in Nov 2004, to become its CEO 6 months later, the ex-IBM executive didn't expect to find a company in such a terrible shape. At a Q&A session at the Churchill Club's Managing Thru Adversity serie last night, Swainson shared with the audience a grim picture of the Islandia company right after he joined: there were no processes (or worse, everyone had its own!), no culture, no budget, no management team! And to make matters worse, the company had no adequate financial reporting tools leaving its executives in the dark until just a few days before addressing Wall Street for its quarterly earnings. After a year or so in the job, Swainson had also to fire the company finance heads for incompetence when he found out that they were "making up" the numbers! Hard to believe this happened in a $4B company. CA's chief also briefly eluded to the accounting scandal dating back 3 years ago noting that it had nothing to do about trying to steal any of the $1B "free cash flow" the company generates every year, but about manipulating the stock price.

I've added a video of the event's "corkiest" moments after the jump. Enjoy!