SiliconBeat

Keynote Systems counted the votes on its proposal seeking shareholder approval to extend its 1999 stock incentive plan at its annual meeting today, and decided it needed more time to, presumably,  solicit additional support for the measure, according to a regulatory filing.

“As of February 27, approximately 12 million of the approximately 14.1 million outstanding shares have been voted, with approximately 48.3% of votes cast in favor of extending the Plan and approximately 51.7% against.”

The apparent rejection of the measure came despite Read the rest of this entry »

FormFactor has sued Spansion for $8.1 million it says the Sunnyvale flash memory maker owes it for product ordered and delivered but never paid for, according to information found in the Livermore company’s 10-K annual financial report filed with the SEC Friday. Read the rest of this entry »

Astellas Pharma is appealing directly to the stockholder of CV Therapeutics, offering to give them $16 a share, an offer it has unsuccessfully made twice before to CV’s board, most recently a week ago.

“While we continue to prefer to reach a negotiated agreement Read the rest of this entry »

It’s official today - we’ve hit double digits:

http://www.edd.ca.gov/About_EDD/pdf/urate200902.pdf

Check out Mark’s pink slip website, circa 2004, at http://www.clockers.com/ Read the rest of this entry »

I’m amazed by the gold mine of insider tips and observations I’m receiving from folks laid off in the Valley who have joined the Pink Slip 2.0 project. Here’s another installment from Linda Kahn, laid off recently from an investment company. Read the rest of this entry »

While Sunnyvale computer-chipmaker Spansion this week stirred outrage by firing 3,000 workers and then boosting some executives’ pay, Cypress Semiconductor responded to the economic slowdown a little differently.

The San Jose-based Cypress cut its top executives’  2009 salaries along with that of its other employees,.according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. That included trimming the pay of Chief Executive T. J. Rodgers.

Rodgers and his top managers will have their base salaries slashed on a sliding scale ranging from 9 percent to 11 percent. Plus, they won’t get an annual bonus for 2008 and will forfeit the fourth-quarter bonus the company typically hands out when times are good.

Cypress spokesman Joseph McCarthy wouldn’t disclose the size of the pay cut for the company’s rank and file, but said it was less than for the top honchos.

“It’s a democratic salary cut,” McCarthy noted. “This is tough on all of us.”

Anu Basu, a professor of entrepreneurship at San Jose State University, spotted our Pink Slip 2.0 project and wondered whether it might dove-tail with her own academic interest - the relationship between job loss and entrepreneurship. “In other words,” she told me, “under what circumstances does job loss push someone into entrepreneurship?” Read the rest of this entry »

SF Mayor Gavin Newsom said in a blog today that the city has filed an application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to develop wave energy off its coast.

The project could generate 10-30 MW of power, and ultimately expand to 100 MW.

Wave energy is a booming business in Europe, but here in California state regulators recently rejected a contract between PG&E and a wave-power company, basically saying the technology wasn’t ready for prime time.

Newsom offers a bold vision of the potential for wave energy: “When wave and tidal power technologies reach commercial scale, they are expected to be able to provide thousands of megawatts of power to our coastal communities, dramatically green our energy portfolios and create thousands of new American jobs,” he writes.

Here is his blog with the news.

Newsom and San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed have a somewhat friendly rivalry over which city is greener. Newsom wins this one, unless Reed can get wave power from the small whitecaps that gently wash over the Alviso shoreline.

A conversation with Bobby Kennedy Jr. can be an illuminating, if a bit of a strenuous, experience.

Kennedy, who was added as a partner specializing in cleantech at San Bruno’s VantagePoint Venture Partners, this week, is one of those big-idea guys.

I talked to him recently for a profile I was doing of Shai Agassi, the tech exec turned electric-car guru. VantagePoint invested in Agassi’s firm, Better Place of Palo Alto, and Kennedy introduced him at a press event when Better Place said it was going to work with the Bay Area big-city mayors to bring EV chargers here.

Anyhow, Kennedy was on his car phone and what I thought would be a 5-10 minute interview stretched into a 30-minute conversation. And it only ended when his cell phone cut out.

Kennedy, the 54-year-old son of Bobby Kennedy and nephew of JFK and Teddy, is an environmental lawyer and activist. He also hosts a radio show, and our conversation that started with electric cars expanded to include the melting Arctic ice cap, China, energy storage and more.

The last thing he told me before his phone clicked out: “This is about transforming our whole country into a self-sufficient nation. What happens then is a whole series of miracles that helps restore our national prestige.”

Like I said, a big idea guy.

VPVP says he’ll focus on water issues, and join the board of 2 of its portfolio companies –  Premium Power, a leading manufacturer of energy storage solutions, and Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technologies Inc., a wastewater remediation company producing environmentally safe commercial fertilizer.