Charles B. Wang (王嘉廉, pinyin: Wáng Jiálián) (born August 19, 1944) is the founder of Computer Associates International Inc. (CA). He was born in Shanghai, but moved to Queens, NY when he was eight years old. He attended the elite Brooklyn Technical High School in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. He earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Queens College in New York, and began working at Columbia University. In 1976, Wang started CA on credit cards at the age of 31. He has since authored two books to help executives master technology: Techno Vision (1994, McGraw-Hill) and Techno Vision II (1997, McGraw-Hill). Wang retired from CA in 2002.

Charles Wang is also well known for his philanthropic works with such causes as the Make a Wish Foundation, Smile Train and others. His donation of 25 million dollars to the State University of New York at Stony Brook towards the creation of the Charles B. Wang Center was the largest in history to a SUNY school.

Charles Wang is also the majority owner of the New York Islanders hockey franchise and the New York Dragons Arena football franchise.

Charles B. Wang Community Health Center

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Charles Wang funded the expansion of the Chinatown Health Clinic and the clinic has been renamed the Charles B. Wang Community Health Center.

Controversy

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Charles Wang's career as CEO of Computer Associates was marked with controversy. In 2000 a class-action lawsuit accused Wang, then president Sanjay Kumar and co-founder Russell Artzt of wrongly reporting more than $500 million in revenue in its 1998 and 1999 fiscal years, in order to artificially inflate the stock price. A previous stock option set in 1995 specified that a certain number of shares would vest when CA's shares sustained a target price. The benchmark was met in 1998, and the three executives combined received nearly $1 billion in CA stock. Since then, at least four other class-action suits have been filed against CA, all of which have named Wang specifically.

A Forbes article investigated why certain NHL franchises could remain profitable despite poor attendance and overall league unprofitability. They found that several league owners underreported their cable broadcast revenue; they specifically accused Wang of excluding half of the $17 million paid to the Islanders for the 2003 cable broadcast season.

External links

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• CA hit with flurry of class-action lawsuits - from CNN (March 11, 2002)
• Report: CA probe focuses on 1998, 1999 revenue - from Computer World (May 20, 2002)
• Ice Capades - from Forbes (November 29, 2004)

1944 births | American entrepreneurs | Bridgeport Sound Tigers | Chinese Americans | Living people | National Hockey League executives | New York Islanders

王嘉廉