Intersil, the Milpitas chip maker, said Chief Financial Officer David Zinsner has resigned “to pursue another opportunity.” His replacement, effective immediately, is the company’s current corporate controller, Jonathan Kennedy, who joined Intersil in 2004 as director of finance, according to a regulatory filing this afternoon.
Zinser, who joined Intersil in 1999 as its corporate treasurer and became CFO in July 2005, will remain an employee of the company through a transition period. No word yet on what or where his new opportunity is.
Intersil’s former chief executive, Richard Beyer, also quit earlier this year citing the chance to “pursue another opportunity.” He was named CEO of Freescale Semiconductor, an Austin-based chip maker focused on analog devices. In October, Beyer told Bloomberg News that he thought chances for a chip recovery in the second half of next year “optimistic”.
At the same time as it was apparently fending off uninvited takeover talk from Fremont-based Virage Logic, the board of directors at LogicVision of San Jose was fashioning new change-in-control agreements for its three top executives that helped insure bigger payouts for them.
Virage Logic sent a letter yesterday to LogicVision’s board in which it said it was “sincerely disappointed in your unwillingness to engage in any substantive discussions regarding our indication of interest transmitted to you on November 10th regarding an all-cash acquisition of LogicVision.” The proposal was to pay $1.05 per share for LogicVision, a 114 percent premium to its closing price the day before the letter was sent.
In his letter to LogicVision’s board, Read the rest of this entry »
Along with its second quarter earnings back in July, Informatica also released news that Girish Pancha, its executive vice president and general manager of its data integration operations, had “announced his plan to retire by the end of 2008.” That no longer is the case.
On Tuesday, Informatica tacked on an “update” about Pancha’s previously announced resignation to its announcement of a new board member on Tuesday. Pancha “will no longer be retiring from his position as of the end of 2008.” Read the rest of this entry »
Mobile game maker Glu Mobile said Tuesday it is reducing headcount and operating expenses to cope with “the increasing economic headwinds facing our industry and and the softening in consumer demand,” according to the company’s chief executive, Greg Ballard, who also announced that he requested the company’s board of directors to reduce his salary by 25 percent as part of the cost-reduction efforts. He was paid about Read the rest of this entry »
Intuitive Surgical, the oh-so-successful Sunnyvale maker of robotic surgery tools, said that its board of directors approved a severance plan that covers its executives in the event of an involuntary separation from service within 12 months after a change in control” of the company.
The news here is: also covered by the same plan are all of Intuitive’s other current employees who have been with the company for at least six months when such an event occurs.
Under the terms of the plan, eligible employees would be entitled to: Read the rest of this entry »
Qun Zhou was reappointed interim Chief Financial Officer at Vermillion, the Fremont company formerly known as Ciphergen Biosystems that develops medical diagnostic tests, to replace the previous interim CFO Richard Taylor, who had served in that function as a consultant to the company since August.
Taylor and Vermillion agreed not to renew his consulting agreement, which expired on November 26, “by mutual consent.”
Zhou served as controller at Vermillion since February 2007, and served as its interim CFO from November 1, 2007 to August 26, 2008. Prior to joining the company, Zhou served as Read the rest of this entry »
Lamassu Holdings, an investment firm located in the Southern California municipal entity known as Newport Coast, revealed in a filing today that it spent $1.8 million to acquire a 9.8 percent stake in Ditech Networks, the Mountain View maker of equipment used to enhance voice quality and cancel echo in phone calls.
Lamasu’s holdings of Ditech were reported on a Form SC 13D, the kind of filing made by investors that own up to wanting to take a more active role in the company’s future, and appears to be the first Read the rest of this entry »
Avistar Communications was warned again by Nasdaq last month that its shares are at risk of being delisted from its stock market listings. It was warned earlier this year that its stock would be delisted unless it could lift its per-share price above $1, which it finally managed to do on a consistent enough basis in August, when it won a reprieve from Nasdaq.
Now the San Mateo supplier of desktip videonconferencing and online collaboration tools, which has been in an intellectual property battle with Microsoft over numerous patents has seen its market value sink below Read the rest of this entry »
The board of directors at Cypress Semiconductor gave Chief Executive T. J. Rodgers a “discretionary bonus” worth $100,000 last month, primarily in recognition of the company’s “successful spin-off of SunPower,” an event that took place in 2006, according to a regulatory filing made today. Cypress shareholders finally received their pay-out from the deal in September when the company divided its majority holding of SunPower stock among Cypress’s own shareholders.
Rather than paying Rodgers in cash, however, Read the rest of this entry »
SunPower, the San Jose maker of solar power chips, revealed in a filing Wednesday afternoon it signed a deal a week ago to supply at least 100 megawatts of solar panels and systems between 2009 and 2011 to City Solar Kraftwerke, a German developer of large-scale photovoltaic power plants.
Without supplying any financial details, SunPower stated that the agreement “is a material revenue opportunity.”
