TSR CEO out less than a month after shareholder takeover 

TSR Inc. has removed its chief executive less than a month after insurgent shareholders took control of the computer staffing and consulting company.

In a terse government filing, Hauppauge-based TSR announced that it was appointing company veteran Thomas Salerno as acting chief executive. Salerno, 52, had served as managing director of the company's largest business unit, TSR Consulting Services.

Shareholders who had accumulated almost half of all TSR shares took control of the company's board of directors when the incumbent management failed to meet a Dec. 30 deadline to purchase their stock holdings for $5.96 million, or $6.25 per share.

At that time, TSR chairman Christopher Hughes and four allied directors resigned from the board of directors, but Hughes continued as CEO.

In the filing last week, the company said that Hughes had begun "a temporary leave of absence."

Salerno declined to comment on the filing as did Hughes.

Shares of TSR, which has 389 employees, climbed 10.6% to close Monday at $4.28.

Under Hughes, the son of company founder and former CEO Joseph Hughes, TSR had rejected a November 2018 bid to acquire all of TSR by one of the major shareholders, QAR Industries of Mineral Wells, Texas.

TSR, Long Island's 33rd-largest public company based on 2018 revenue of $65 million, provides contract computer programmers for the utility, insurance, publishing, pharmaceutical and financial services industries.

The company, founded in 1969, also provides business analysts and other staff.

By Ken Schachter

kenneth.schachter@newsday.comkschach

Ken Schachter covers corporate news, including technology and aerospace, and other business topics for Newsday. He has also worked at The Miami Herald and The Jerusalem Post.