The CEO of Micro Focus, the software development tools business and one of the UK’s largest IT companies, has stepped down with immediate effect.

Nigel Clifford was given the job just over a year ago, but the company’s financial performance has wavered since then. It has issued two profit warning during that time, and in February 2011 announced that it had instigated a major cost cutting regime to improve profitability.

Clifford’s predecessor Stephen Kelly stepped down abruptly in September 2009, having engineered the acquisitions of Borland and Compuware’s application testing business. The company operated without a CEO until Clifford’s appointment in April 2010.

Before joining Micro Focus, Clifford was CEO of Symbian, the mobile operating system vendor acquired by Nokia in 2008. The Finnish handset maker has since decided to drop Symbian from its smartphone in favour of Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7.