Fired Microsoft CIO lands COO role at mortgage company

When Stuart Scott was forced out of Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) just recently for 'violations of company policy,' many wondered if it would be hard for him to land another executive job with a blemish like that on his resume. Apparently, it did very little to hinder Scott, as he's now at mortgage lender Taylor, Bean & Whitaker (based in Florida) as Chief Operating Officer. Alas, entering into the mortgage industry right now is, well, just plain odd.

What is Scott up to? As Chief Information Officer of the world's largest software maker, he was in charge of global computer networks that kept the company connected every second of ever day -- among many other things.

Scott came from General Electric Corp. (NYSE: GE) to Microsoft -- and now has landed a position in the embattled mortgage industry with a little-known lender in Florida. Florida, as you may know, if one of the top states being hit by mortgage foreclosures at this time, and it's expected to get worse in 2008. As they say, the plot thickens. Why this specific move by Scott? A lack of other choices perhaps?

According to Ed Highland with Standard & Poor, Taylor, Bean & Whitaker is "a good-sized company" that services about 300,000 prime loans. It's not a subprime lender on the fence or anything near that. So, although this is probably a decent move for Scott, it's an odd career twist from two global brands to a much smaller mortgage lender in a state with a bad mortgage reputation.

But still, while the world will never know why he was sacked from Microsoft (how big was the violation?), Scott's appointment may have been one of the few positions he had pigeonholed himself into.