Plantronics, the Santa Cruz maker of headsets said last week that it plans to cut 18 percent of its workforce, or about 900 jobs, “effective immediately”, the same day that it warned that its sales for its fiscal 2009 third quarter would be about $184 million, lower than the guidance range it had previously given of $205-$220 million.
The company blamed the shortfall on Read the rest of this entry »
Seagate Technology, the disk drive manufacturer that last week said it was going to reduce its worldwide work force by about six percent, said severance costs for the approximately 2,950 employees affected by the layoffs would be about $90 million. The layoffs include a reduction of its U.S. work force of 10 percent, indicating that workers in this country are absorbing a majority of the cuts.
The company estimated that it will take a charge of about $90 million, mostly in its 2008 fourth quarter, that will consist mainly of employee termination costs.
Seagate also said it would be reducing the salaries of certain management employees beginning in February, with pay for its chief executive and other executive officers being reduced 25 percent, for its senior vice presidents by 20 percent, its vice presidents by 15 percent, and for its management, sales, supervisors and professional employees by 10 percent.
The salary cuts will save the company about $80 million, $10 million less that the cost of severance being paid out to the nearly 3,000 employees it is firing.
Smart Modular, the Fremont maker of storage chips, said it is planning to cut an other 5 percent to 7 percent of its employees, on top of the 19 percent it reported laying off in September.
The company reported having 1,466 employees at the end of its 2008 fiscal year on Aug. 29.
The job cuts follow by a day the news of layoffs at another Silicon Valley company, Rackable Systems, which said Tuesday it would be laying off 15 percent of its workforce, last reported to be 374 at the end of 2007.
The personal computer industry suffered its worst growth rate since 2002 in the final quarter of last year. Shipments increased 1.1 percent to 78.1 million units, according to Gartner, an information-technology research firm.
“The United States experienced steeper than expected shipment declines due to the recession. The Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region was also affected by the economic slow down across key countries,” said Mika Kitagawa, principal analyst for Gartner’s Client Computing Markets group. “Asia/Pacific recorded the worst shipment growth since Read the rest of this entry »
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John Gifford, who founded analog chip maker Maxim Integrated Products and served as its chief executive until his retirement in 2007, passed away Sunday of an apparent heart attack, according to a company press release distributed Monday.
Gifford was born in 1941 and grew up in Los Angeles. After graduating from UCLA in 1963 with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, he worked for Fairchild Semiconductor, first in sales in L.A. and later in marketing in Silicon Valley.
An industry legend, Gifford was one of the many engineers Read the rest of this entry »
Atigen Communications of Fremont is cutting the size of its board in the wake of a decision to not renominate Eric Wanger after learning that he traded in the company’s stock during blackout periods that prohibit insider trading. The change becomes effective at the company’s next annual shareholders meeting on Feb. 9, according to a filing with the SEC Monday.
Altigen also reported in its proxy that was also filed Tuesday, that Wanger failed to timely file 32 separate forms, including 25 covering 67 transaction related to the acquisition of 785,973 shares of the maker of telecommunications server products.
Wanger revealed his increased holdings in an amendment to a 13D filing on Dec. 12 in which he reported “a material increase” in his Altigen holdings that was due months earlier. In the filing, Wanger characterized his failure to file promptly as “inadvertent.”
Wanger, who was named to Altigen’s board two years ago and serves on both its auditing and compensation committees, manages his own investment firm. He has a law degree from Stanford, received his B.S. in math from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is a chartered financial analyst and a member of the California bar.
“One clear sign of the challenging economic environment we face is the decision by executives to take a pay cut,” according to a survey of executive pay practices by Equilar, the Redwood City information services firm that mines SEC filings for compensation data.
Of course, another “clear sign” might be the accelerating rate of layoffs. Newly announced plans to eliminate another Read the rest of this entry »
Greetings folks. I’m making a brief appearance in the Bay Area this week in between my holiday vacation and another vacation next week. So this blog has been silent for a couple weeks, and that will continue through Jan. 19 when I return. Also, we have some big changes coming up to our business blogs that we’ll announce soon. So stay tuned and I’ll provide more details when I can.
On Tuesday, Omnicell’s vice president of sales “informed” the company that she would be resigning, effective Feb. 15, according to a filing the company made Tuesday with the SEC. The company hastened to add that her resignation “is due to personal reason and not the result of any disagreement with Omnicell.
The same day, Alcoa said it would be laying off 15 percent of its work force, or about 14,500 employees, helping make Luhr’s resignation seem like a pretty gutsy move, given the current business environment, no?
Well, no.
Imagine our surprise when in the next paragraph the company explains that it will pay Luhr her base salary for 14 months after she leaves (cost: $277,667) as well as the premiums for her health insurance over that period.
“In return Ms. Luhr has agreed to provide Omnicell with a general release of claims.”
What claims? She has no disagreements with the company, right? Perhaps we lack a certain business sophistication to understand this, but as more people are let go from their jobs against their will, this kind of arrangement will seem even harder to understand.
Aviza Technology, the supplier of chip-making equipment and processes, decided it was time to crow about its upwardly revised profit forecast for its fiscal 2009 first quarter that ended Dec. 26.
Despite the fact that the company expects sales to be at the low end of its original guidance range of $25 million to $32 million, the Scotts Valley company said it now expects “adjusted” net income to range somewhere between Read the rest of this entry »
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