AMD Finally Fills CEO Post

After over six months of searching for a new CEO to replace former CEO Dirk Meyer, who resigned back in January and had been rumored to be forced out due to his lack of vision, AMD NASDAQ has finally chosen a new CEO. AMD has selected Rory Read, Lenovo’s President and Chief Operating Officer to lead the firm as its new CEO. AMD’s search for a new CEO has been painfully difficult. The semiconductor firm, which has managed somewhat of a resurgence while under the direction of former CEO, Dirk Meyer, and its current interim CEO, Thomas Seifert still has a difficult road to true recovery and long term survival. While AMD has been reasonably successful in the PC world as second banana to I

ntel, the company has very far to go with regard to processors for mobile phones and tablets the current growth generators. AMD has been through rough waters for sometime and many potential candidates have chosen not to be considered for the CEO position. Throughout the CEO search process a number of potential candidate names have been rumored under consideration including Tim Cook, Apple’s soon to be new CEO after Steve Jobs made his dramatic resignation, Mark Hurd, Oracle’s co-president and former HP CEO, Pat Gelsinger the Carlyle Group Chief Operating Officer and others have all apparently turned down AMD.

Read’s selection to run AMD is a positive, the company has finally found someone to take on the challenge. While Read has an impressive background while at Lenovo as well as significant leadership work while working at IBM for twenty three years he has a monumental task ahead of him. AMD’s press release announcement contained a terrific spin on Read’s selection. we will just have to wait and see. At least company now has a new leader and get to work on addressing many of the firm’s future needs and strategic direction.

Investors need to closely monitor what Read does upon taking the reigns and going forward.

New AMD CEO Makes Real Changes

AMD's AMD (NYSE) new CEO, Dirk Meyer, who took over the position back in July (see blog), has succeeded in coming up with a new way for re-structuring the struggling chip maker.  Today the company announced it would be spinning off its manufacturing arm into a new business and giving away its debt.  The new business will initially be called the The Foundry Company.  The original company will continue focusing on the design of computer chips and will be run by Dirk Meyer.  According to a CNET story by Brooke Crothers,

The newly created Foundry Company was described by AMD Chief Executive Dirk Meyer on Tuesday as a "brand-new and leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing company." It will be run by Doug Grose, who will relinquish his current role as AMD's senior vice president of manufacturing operations to become CEO of The Foundry Company.

... Hector Ruiz--the current AMD chairman--will relinquish his role as AMD's executive chairman to become chairman of The Foundry Company. 

As part of the change, AMD managed to succeed in bringing about this shift through a major additional investment of approximately $6 billion from Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC) and Mubadala Development both of whom are investment arms of the Abu Dhabi government and already own a large share of the firm.  It still remains uncertain how much in the end the latest dramatic changes will make for the firm in relation to its major competitor and remaining industry behemoth, Intel, but at least the company appears to be making some significant changes.  

Maybe Meyer has more up his sleeve.  Stay tuned.

For more:

Deal.com (update 10/9)

Giga Om

NY Times blog

Financial Times

Bloomberg

bit-tech net

Portfolio.com

UK Register

Gulfnews

Barron's Blog

Business Week blog

CEO Watch - Hector Ruiz, AMD, Update 7

It's official and about time, AMD's CEO, Hector Ruiz, is finally out. We have been expecting this change for a long time (see earlier blogs).

AMD's Board of Directors after the company announced another disappointing quarter elected Dirk Meyer an employee of the firm since 1996 and the company's president and chief operating officer as Ruiz's replacement as CEO. Meyer was supposedly being groomed to be Ruiz's successor but the change took far too long. Ruiz will become executive chairman of AMD and executive chairman of the board. According to a story by Anton Gonsalves for Information Week,

Board member Robert Palmer said in a statement announcing the executive shuffle that Meyer's election to CEO is "the final phase of a two-year succession plan developed and implemented jointly by AMD's board of directors and executive team. "Dirk's extensive experience as a business leader and his notable engineering accomplishments before and during his 12 years at AMD make him ideally suited to build upon the foundation Hector created and lead AMD," Palmer said. Ruiz praised Meyer as a "gifted leaders who possesses the right skills and experience to continue driving AMD and the industry forward. I am placing the company in excellent hands."

Meyer has an extremely difficult job ahead of him. AMD continues to fall behind Intel and is struggling to find a strategy to turn itself around. According to the Information Week story Gonsalves writes,

AMD is in the process of trying to reshape its business and differentiate its product line by integrating the graphics technology obtained through the 2006 acquisition of ATI Technologies with AMD's general-purpose x86 microprocessors. "My immediate priority is to work with the leadership team to accelerate this transformation," Meyer said.

Keep a close eye on the firm.

For more:

LA Times (7/18)

Newsweek (7/18)

Globe and Mail Canada (7/18)

BloggingStocks
CNET
Seattlepi.com
ZDNet
Times Union
Guardian UK

CEO Watch - AMD, Hector Ruiz, Update 3

As AMD continues to struggle, CNET today reports that Dirk Meyer, AMD's President and Chief Operating Officer is being groomed to succeed Ruiz at some point. I hope if it is true, the change will be sooner than later. AMD needs new blood and it needs it now.

A little more:

EE times
Extremetech

CEO Watch - Hector Ruiz, AMD

Hector Ruiz the CEO of AMD, the also ran chip manufacturer, was highlighted today in piece by Alexsei Oreskovic of TheStreet.com. As the company continues to languish in comparison to its main competitor Intel, Ruiz's position is beginning to look at risk. Here is some of what Oreskovic wrote:

With AMD's financial performance and share price slumping, talk of a management change is in the air.

Speculation has been heightened by recent events, including the exit of investor relations head Mike Hasse, and the September departure of sales chief Henri Richard.

Last week, President Dirk Meyer was appointed to the company's board.

All potential steps to a management shakeup at the very top. We will just have to stay tuned.

For more:

HotHardware
Daily Tech
CBR
24/7 wall Street
Bloomberg
Newsfactor