本帖最后由 choi 于 12-19-2017 10:37 编辑
(1) Don Clark, A New Breed Drives a Deal-Making Frenzy at Chip Firms; A slowdown in chip sales has led some to pursue deals to grow. New York Times, Dec 18, 2017, at page B1
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/ ... ter-chip-firms.html
Note:
(a) "SANTA CLARA, Calif — Matthew Murphy, a first-time chief executive, was barely a year into a turnaround effort at Marvell Semiconductor when he sold its board on a bold move: a $6 billion offer [made in November 2017] to purchase Cavium, another midsize maker of computer chips.* * * The 45-year-old chief executive has taken other big steps since succeeding the husband-and-wife team who led Marvell for 20 years, including trimming 1,700 jobs through layoffs and sales of businesses. * * * At Marvell, Mr Murphy inherited a thorny situation. The company, which had disclosed accounting irregularities and a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation, was late in filing financial statements and had suffered falling sales. In April 2016, not long after an activist investor, Starboard Value[ LP (for limited partnership); 2011- ; based in Manhattan], took a major stake in Marvell, its board forced out the founder and chief executive, Sehat Sutardja, and his wife, Weili Dai, who was Marvell's president. As part of the shake-up, Mr Murphy was recruited from Maxim Integrated, the chip maker where he had worked for 22 years. He said his initial reaction to Marvell had been 'I wouldn't touch that thing with a 10-foot pole.' [Then he changed his mind.] To stave off stock-market delisting, he quickly released Marvell's late financial reports. * * * After those changes were in place, Mr Murphy began eyeing Cavium."
(i) "he sold its board on a bold move"
(A) sell (vt): "2 persuade someone of the merits of * * * 2.2 cause (someone) to become enthusiastic about <I'm just not sold on the idea>"
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/sell
(B) sell (vt): "to persuade or influence to a course of action or to the acceptance of something <sell children on reading>"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sell
(ii) 戴伟立
https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/戴伟立
(1060- ; 女; 美满电子科技公司共同创始人之一' 祖籍浙江宁波,生于上海; 1979年,随家人移民美国加州; 加州大学伯克利分校计算机科学学士; "认识同在计算机系的研究生周秀文 * * * 1985年,二人结婚")
(iii) Sehat Sutardja 周秀文
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sehat_Sutardja
(was born in 1961 in [Jakarta,]Indonesia to a Chinese Indonesian family; came to the US in 1980; While at Berkeley, Sutardja met his future wife Weili Dai in a campus elevator))
PhD (1988) and MS in computer science, University of California, Berkeley; BS in electrical engineering from Iowa State in 1983/
(iv) Marvell Technology Group, Ltd
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvell_Technology_Group
(was founded in 1995 by Sehat Sutardja, his wife Weili Dai, and brother Pantas Sutardja; Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif (operational) + Hamilton, Bermuda (legal domicile) [Hamilton is capital of British Overseas Territory Bermuda] )
(v) Matthew Murphy
(A) Leadership. Marvell, undated
www.marvell.com/company/leadership/matt-murphy.jsp
(Matt Murphy: "Prior to joining Marvell, Matt worked for Maxim Integrated, where he advanced through a series of business leadership roles over two decades. Most recently, he served as Executive Vice President of Business Units and Sales & Marketing * * * Matt earned a BA from Franklin & Marshall College, and is also a graduate of the Stanford Executive Program")
In other words, he is not an engineer by training.
(B) Franklin & Marshall College
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_%26_Marshall_College
(in Lancaster, Pennsylvania; as a result of the 1853 merger of Franklin College and Marshall College; the former was in 1787 named for Benjamin Franklin, who donated £200; the latter opened in 1836 and was named for the fourth Chief Justice of the United States John Marshall)
(b) "Mr Murphy is just one of the people shaking up the once-stolid business of semiconductors * * * The founders of many chip companies, typically technical experts, have retired or stepped down in recent years. In their place has come an aggressive set of chief executives who are quicker to push big acquisitions, slash costs and drive up profits. Their focus on maximizing shareholder value helps explain the deal-making boom in the chip industry, which also includes a $105 billion bid by Broadcom to acquire the mobile chip kingpin Qualcomm and the completion of Analog Devices' $14.8 billion purchase of Linear Technology."
(c) " 'Founders tend to be much bigger risk-takers,' said Syed Ali, Cavium's chief executive, who co-founded the company in 2000. 'We are a dying breed, I guess.' Among those who are representative of the new generation of chip company leaders is Hock Tan. Mr Tan, the chief executive of Broadcom"
(i) Cavium, Inc is based in San Jose, Calif.
(ii) Team. Cavium Inc, undated
http://cavium.com/team-syed-ali.html
(Syed Ali: a cofounder; president, CEO and chairman since the inception of the company in 2000; "From 1998 to 2000, Mr Ali was Vice President of Marketing and Sales at Malleable Technologies, a communication chip company * * * He received a BSEE from Osmania University, in Hyderabad, India and an M.S.E from the University of Michigan")
(iii) Malleable Technologies, Inc (founded in 1998 by Curtis Abbott; acquired in 2000 by PMC-Sierra for $229m in stock [on the eve of .dot.com burst] ) en.wikipedia.org
was based in San Jose.
(iv) PMC-Sierra, Inc ( (1984-2016; Headquarters Sunnyvale, Calif) was acquired in 2016 by Microsemi Corp (1959- ; based in City of Aliso Viejo, Orange County, Calif)
(d) "Another chief executive who has wrung profits from purchased companies is Steve Sanghi, who leads Microchip Technology in Chandler [a Phoenix suburb], Ariz * * * Microchip bought [Atmel Corp] for $3.6 billion last year * * * [and] purchased [Micrel] for $839 million in 2015 * * * The management changes haven’t come without conflict with the previous generation of chip executives. Raymond Zinn, who co-founded Micrel in 1978 and led it until the sale to Microchip, criticized layoffs and other moves of Mr Sanghi's in an interview with Electronic Engineering Times last year."
(i) Corporate Officers. Microchip, undated
https://www.microchip.com/about-us/leadership
(Steve Sanghi; "Mr Sanghi holds a Masters of Science degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Massachusetts [at Amherst] and a Bachelor of Science degree in Electronics and Communication from Punjab University, India")
(ii) Microchip Technology[, Inc]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microchip_Technology
(1987- ; an American manufacturer of microcontroller, memory and analog semiconductors; with wafer fabs in [A] Tempe, Arizona, [b} Gresham, Oregon and [C] Colorado Springs, Colorado)
(iii) Don Clark And Josh Beckerman, Microchip Technology to Buy Micrel for $839 Million. Wall Street Journal, May 8, 2017.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/mic ... -million-1431039698
("Micrel Inc, which has faced pressure since last summer from activist investor Starboard Value LP. * * * Micrel has been led since 1978 by Raymond Zinn, 77 years old, who is its president, CEO and chairman. The San Jose, Calif., company is particularly known for chips based on analog rather than digital technology")
There is no need to read the rest of this WSJ report. Micrel was and is based on San Jose, Calif.
(e) "At Cypress Semiconductor [1982- ; based in San Jose], TJ Rodgers [a cofounder] resigned as chief executive in April 2016 after 34 years running the company — but later led a proxy battle to place two nominees on the Cypress board. The new [2016- ] Cypress chief executive, Hassane El-Khoury, 38, has narrowed the company's focus, pushed more integrated combinations of chips and software and cut 500 jobs."
Hassane El-Khoury. Cypress Semiconductor Corp, undated
www.cypress.com/hassane-el-khoury
("El-Khoury holds a bachelor's of science degree in electrical engineering (BSEE) from Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, Mich., and a master's degree in engineering management from Oakland University in Rochester Hills, Mich")
(f) All semiconductor companies mentioned above were/ are fabless, except Microchip, Micrel and Cypress. It also appears that most, of not all, of the executives above, though holding engineering degrees, made their careers in business side -- unlike Morris Chang of TSMC.
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