that were ending up passed over in the succession planning, Allaire requested to Thoman that they be given seats on the board as vice-chairman. As well as being Xerox's President and CEO, in 1999–2000 Thoman served as US head of the Transatlantic Dialogue to work with European corporate CEOs, the US Secretary of Commerce, the US Trade Representative and the EC Commissioner to standardize corporate regulations, where he met French President Jacques Chirac. Allaire and Thoman both shared the vision that Xerox needed to reinvent itself to succeed in the Digital Age, and Thoman's record of working with Gerstner in IBM's turnaround made him the ideal person to lead the transformation. However, it has been reported that many of Xerox's senior executives including Romeril and Buehler remained loyal to Allaire and viewed Thoman as an outsider. These undercut Thoman's authority as CEO, as he was only able to make a few senior management changes, and the entrenched bureaucracy as Xerox (nicknamed "Burox") provided passive resistance to Thoman's initiatives. This in turn may have contributed to several botched reorganizations under his tenure, particularly the realignment of the sales force. Thoman was forced to resign on May 11, 2000, with Allaire resuming the role of CEO and he promoted Anne M. Mulcahy to President and COO. Thoman then joined Evercore Partners as a senior advisor. Allaire, Thoman, Romeril, and three other senior Xerox executives paid the SEC the sum of $22 million to settle accusations by securities regulators that they participated in a large accounting fraud that allowed the company to overstate its profits by $1.4 billion from 1997 to 2000. As the "Xerox six" were not found guilty of wrongdoing, Xerox said that it would reimburse the executives for all but $3 million of the $22 million and cover their legal fees. The $3 million was classified as a fine by the S.E.C. and cannot be reimbursed under its rules. References Xerox people IBM employees Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies alumni Living people Year of birth missing (living people)