Peter Karmanos, who also owns the Carolina Hurricanes, is stepping down as executive chairman of Compuware. The company has an operation in Durham.
Karmanos c-founded the Detroit-based software development businesss nearly four decades ago.
The company detailed the plans in a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The 69-year-old is expected to become a consultant for Compuware, earning $600,000 a year.
The move to leave the company’s board is effective March 31.
Karmanos stepped down as Compuware’s chief executive in 2011.
He will be succeeded as nonexecutive chairman by Gurminder Bedi, the company’s lead independent director.
Karmanos moved Compuware’s headquarters from suburban Farmington Hills to a new building in downtown Detroit in 2002. He had said earlier that he was aiming to retire by 2013, when he turns 70 and the company turns 40.
“I’d like to leave with a really great flourish at the end,” Karmanos told The Detroit Free Press in an interview last year.
Compuware has an operation in Durham at the American Tobacco complex.
Karmanos believes the company could triple its market value to $6 billion by 2013.
