Jim Clark resigns as Shutterfly chairman

Online retailer and photo service provider Shutterfly Inc. is looking for a new chairman for its board of directors.

On Jan. 8, Jim Clark, current chairman and a member of the compensation committee, resigned and cited the Sarbanes-Oxley Act as a prime reason. “My reasons are twofold: As a technologist, I feel there is little that I can offer to guide what has become a manufacturing company and because of the constraints imposed by Sarbanes-Oxley on my having any significant role on the board,” Clark wrote in his resignation letter to Shutterfly CEO Jeffrey Housenbold. “As I understand it, Sarbox dictates that I not chair any committee due to the size of my holdings, not be on the compensation committee because of the loan I once made to the company, not be on the governance committee, and it even dictates that some other board member must carry out the perfunctory duties of the chairman. What’s left is liability and constraints on stock transactions, neither of which excite me.”

Clark is the founder of NetScape, which developed and launched a widely used commercial Internet browser in 1994.