Paul Arthur Allaire (July 21, 1938 – February 24, 2019)[1] was an American entrepreneur who served as CEO and chairman of Xerox Corporation, and as a director on several other public companies.
Allaire graduated from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1960 with a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering, where he was a brother of Phi Kappa Theta.
[5] Allaire was elected as the company's chairman on May 29, 1991, after Kearns accepted an appointment as Secretary of Education in the administration of President George H. W. Bush.
In his short tenure as chairman, he tried innovative marketing techniques, such as replacing dissatisfied customers' equipment free of charge, and selling home-office products in supermarkets.
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.
[15] After leaving Xerox, Allaire became the chairman of GlaxoSmithKline's remuneration committee where he remained until his retirement in 2003, which was forced as part of a settlement with the SEC.
[17] Allaire, Thoman, Romeril, and three other senior Xerox executives paid the SEC $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.