Papows bows out but denies he was pushed

Lotusphere was a particularly trying experience for departing president Jeff Papows, who had been hit by a series of scandals.

He was sued by a female colleague, who claimed work-place bias that stemmed from a long-standing "intimate relationship" between Papows and his secretary.

Only weeks previously The Wall Street Journal had accused him of garnishing the truth about his life. The paper said he had claimed variously to be an orphan, a Marine Corps captain who saved a friend's life by throwing a grenade to safety, and an F4 pilot who once had to eject to escape a crash that killed his co-pilot.

In fact, said the paper, his parents were alive and well, he was a lieutenant, and the nearest he had ever been to any military drama, flying or otherwise, was a job in air-traffic control.

He resigned on 6 January saying that he plans to run his own company. "This has certainly been a period of a ridiculous degree of attention to everything from my relationship with my parents to the veracity of my hobbies (sic)," he told a Lotusphere press conference. "But I tell you point blank that this had absolutely nothing to do with my decision to leave."

He is succeeded as president by Al Zollar, an IBM man. John Thompson, head of IBM Software, stressed that this did not herald a tighter IBM rein. "I think what is important here is that Lotus and its people and customers take advantage of the synergy with IBM without becoming smothered by it," he said.