Friday, May 20, 2005

Waitt Retires From Gateway

Ted Waitt, founder of Irvine-based Gateway Computer, has retired from the company's board of directors. Waitt, who founded Gateway twenty years ago. Waitt said he was retiring to focus on a number of business and philanthropic interests. Waitt is involved with his own private investment company, Avalon Capital Group, managing more than a billion dollars; a construction finance company in the Midwest; chairing The Waitt Family Foundation; and three non-profit institutes. Waitt founded Gateway as a mail order retailer from a farm in South Dakota, and made Gateway famous for its cow-patterned boxes. Gateway moved to San Diego in 1998, and merged in March 2004 with Irvine-based eMachines. Since then, the company been headed by Wayne Inouye of eMachines and has been driven by the former eMachines executive team.

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