CIO.com to the CIOs of Hot Topic and Colgate Palmolive: Mazel Tov

I missed some good news and bad news while I was on vacation, and in case you missed it, too, here I am, your humble, faithful servant, filling you in. First, the good news:

The CIOs of teen clothing retailer Hot Topic and Colgate Palmolive, Tom Beauchamp and Ed Toben, saw their sons married over the past two weekends. Beauchamp’s son Kyle, a research associate with the hedge fund Greywolf Capital, tied the knot with Jana Leigh Gasn on July 8, 2007 at the fashionable Cipriani restaurant in NYC, according to the announcement in The New York Times.

The previous weekend, Toben’s son Ryan, a wealth transfer strategies analyst with J.P. Morgan Chase, put a ring on Anne Elizabeth Rickard‘s finger during a ceremony in Santa Barbara, Calif.  The announcement about Toben’s nuptials also appeared in the Times‘ wedding pages. Congratulations to the newlyweds and their dads! You know CIOs have arrived when their kids are making the pages of the Times‘ society section.

And now, for the bad news:

Three CIOs lost their jobs last week in corporate cost-cutting moves:

Donald Trump fired his CIO, Virginia McDowell, according to several news sources. (Now watch me get  sued for saying McDowell got fired, never mind the fact that the Donald yells it an an aspiring apprentice every week.) McDowell joined Trump Entertainment Resorts in October 2005. The debt-laden company also let go of Paul Keller, the executive in charge of design and construction. News of the two layoffs accompanied reports that Trump’s board of directors had rejected several buy-out offers.

The Washington Business Journal reported that the CIO and CTO of Internet phone service provider SunRocket received pink slips at the end of June. (So did the CFO and several lower-level employees.) CIO Robert Kramer and CTO Mark Fedor were the victims of their company’s restructuring efforts. Who says the top brass doesn’t get affected by layoffs?

The CIO of Spectrum Brands was one of several executives to have lost his job with the Atlanta-based consumer products company. The company’s European vice president of IT also got the axe. The company did not provide the names of the executives affected in the press release, and a PR person for Spectrum is checking on whether their names can be

disclosed. An

AP story on the layoffs at Spectrum reported that the cost-cutting measures will save the company $50 million a year.

Stay tuned for more news about CIOs.