SiliconBeat

The people and companies driving the innovation of Silicon Valley

Archive for November, 2008

SunPower signs sizeable deal to supply German power-plant developer(1)

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.”

Share/Save/Bookmark

Leave a comment

Heritage Commerce takes $40 million infusion from Treasury Department(0)

Heritage Commerce, the parent company of San Jose-based Heritage Bank of Commerce, decided to take up the Treasury Department’s offer for an infusion of $40 million in cash in exchange for 40,000 shares of preferred shares and warrants to buy 462,963 shares of its common stock. As is the case with its investments in other U.S. banks, the preferred shares will earn a 5 percent annual dividend for the first five years with a bump up to 9 percent thereafter.

The warrants, which have Read the rest of this entry »

Share/Save/Bookmark

Leave a comment

Chordiant grants special bonuses to execs a month after cutting workforce 13 percent(2)

We continue to be fascinated by the mixed messages sent out by companies that are laying off employees at the same time they are giving more money to executives to convince them not to leave.

Is there some increased need for managers that works inversely to the number of employees left to manage?

Chordiant Software, the Cupertino company Read the rest of this entry »

Share/Save/Bookmark

Leave a comment

Tessera OKs 10 percent raise for new CEO named in August(0)

Wow, that was fast. Henry Nothhaft, who was named chief executive at Tessera Technologies in  August after serving on its board as vice chairman, scored a 10 percent raise after less than five months on the job.

Nothhaft was originally granted a salary of Read the rest of this entry »

Share/Save/Bookmark

Leave a comment

Its stock down more than half this year, Shutterfly gives CEO big raise(17)

Shutterfly, the Redwood City Internet-based digital photo sharing site, boosted the salary of its chief executive, Jeffrey Housenbold, by nearly two-thirds next year to $485,000 from the $300,000 salary he got in 2008, according to a filing the company made Monday with the SEC. That comes on the heels of a 9 percent salary increase he got last year. He’ll also get 10 percent of his new salary as a guaranteed minimum bonus to his cash compensation.

The company also served up a helping of Read the rest of this entry »

Share/Save/Bookmark

Leave a comment

Maxygen execs awarded bonuses as workers prepare for pink slips(0)

A month after it announced plans to cut 30 percent of its staff during the first quarter of 2009 “in order to preserve cash”, Maxygen released details today about bonuses being paid to its top officers, including $200,000 for its chief executive Russell Howard.

Eighty percent of the 2008 cash bonus plan was based on company performance while the remaining 20 percent was “discretionary”. Total performance goals were Read the rest of this entry »

Share/Save/Bookmark

Leave a comment

eBay + Yahoo = $26.7 billion(4)

Remember way back in the beginning of this year when Microsoft supposedly said it was willing to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion? (And that was before the company reportedly was willing to bump the offer up even more).

Well, not that I’m actually suggesting anyone do this, but…Thanks to the stock markets’ implosion, if you had enough spare change lying under your couch, you could now buy eBay AND Yahoo for less than that. Read the rest of this entry »

Share/Save/Bookmark

Leave a comment

One Yahoo director sells and another buys company shares(0)

Two  directors on Yahoo’s board traded in opposite directions earlier this month. Eric Hippeau, who has served as a Yahoo director since 1996, decided to rid himself of 40 percent of his Yahoo stock holdings Nov. 6, a day after Google dropped plans to enter an advertising deal with Yahoo, when he sold Read the rest of this entry »

Share/Save/Bookmark

Leave a comment

Chip index drops to 12-year low(0)

You know a stock index is in deep trouble when the best stock performance by one of its constituents is a loss of 4.3 percent. That’s the story with the Philadelphia Stock Index, known to us by the shorthand SOX. The best stock among it was the Irvine chip maker, Broadcom, whose stock dropped a mere 4.3 percent Wednesday, but that was a small enough drop to make it the bright spot among the stocks that make up the SOX, which itself fell 7.7 percent Wednesday to its lowest point in twelve years.

The chip sector, which has lost more than half its collective market value so far this year, was battered today by Read the rest of this entry »

Share/Save/Bookmark

Leave a comment

Mark Cuban takes off the muzzle and responds to SEC case(1)

Well, that didn’t take long. It only took Mark Cuban one day to break his monastic vow of silence.

On Monday, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed an insider trading case against Cuban. The feds claimed Cuban received confidential information from the CEO of Mamma.com and turned around and dumped his shares, saving $750,000 when the stock dropped the next day.

Perhaps the biggest shock of all came next: Cuban wrote on his blog that he would say nothing beyond issuing a statement about the charges.

Bo-ring!

Fortunately, that self-imposed muzzle came right off Tuesday. Read the rest of this entry »

Share/Save/Bookmark

Leave a comment