OfficeMax CEO quits as troubles deepen

CHICAGO — Retailer OfficeMax Inc. announced the resignation Monday of CEO Christopher Milliken and acknowledged misstating 2004 results amid an accounting scandal in the latest setback for the struggling office products retailer.

The company also said it had fired two more employees, increasing to six the number terminated for sending $3.3 million in bogus bills to a supplier over a two-year period.

The disclosures were the latest in a series of problems for the company since last fall, when it changed its name from Boise Cascade Corp. and moved its headquarters from Idaho to Itasca, Ill. That move followed the late 2003 acquisition of OfficeMax — then based in Cleveland — for $1.2 billion by Boise Cascade, which sold off its wood and paper products operations to focus on office products.

Shares of OfficeMax fell $1.73, or 5.5 percent, to close at $30.02 on the New York Stock Exchange. They are down more than 20 percent since June.

Milliken, who had been president and chief executive officer since November, departed in what OfficeMax characterized as a “mutual decision” of the CEO and the board of directors related to the company’s poor recent performance.

He is the third top-level official to leave this year. Chief financial officer Brian Anderson and retail chief Gary Peterson resigned last month, when the company also said its fourth-quarter earnings report would be delayed because of accounting problems.