RadiumOne Confirms That It Has Fired CEO Gurbaksh Chahal

RadiumOne just announced that its board of directors terminated CEO and Chairman Gurbaksh Chahal on Saturday night. The company said in an emailed statement that Chief Operating Officer Bill Lonergan will be taking over as CEO.

Chahal’s firing was first reported in Re/code.

The company faced intense criticism and calls for Chahal’s ouster earlier this week after he pled guilty to misdemeanor charges of battery and domestic violence battery. More serious felony charges were dropped, reportedly because video footage was ruled inadmissible, and because the victim declined to cooperate with prosecutors.

Chahal defended himself today in a blog post, saying that his temper “got the better” of him after he learned his girlfriend “was having unprotected sex for money with other people.” However, he insisted that “there is a difference between temper and domestic violence” and that the video footage (which has not been released publicly) was “bullshit” that “made the SFPD look bad because they violently assaulted me as I opened my door despite my being fully cooperative.”

Chahal still refers to himself as CEO in the blog post (published before today’s announcement but after RadiumOne says the decision was made), and does not mention his removal, which suggests that he may put up a legal fight against the board’s decision. (Update: Or maybe Chahal just didn’t know.)

TechCrunch announced yesterday that we are dropping RadiumOne as a sponsor for our Disrupt New York conference.

Here’s the full RadiumOne statement:

At a board meeting yesterday evening, RadiumOne’s board of directors voted to terminate the employment of Gurbaksh Chahal as CEO and Chairman of the company. Bill Lonergan, the company COO, will take over as CEO of the Company immediately. Bill has an extraordinary professional background and has helped build Blue Lithium and RadiumOne into industry leading brands. We are confident he will continue Radium One’s impressive trajectory.

RadiumOne builds software that automates media buying, making big data actionable for digital marketers.

RadiumOne uses programmatic advertising to connect brands to their next customers by incorporating valuable first-party data about behaviors, actions and interests demonstrated by consumers across web and mobile touch points.

Based in San Francisco, RadiumOne has offices across the US, Canada, Europe and Australia.