SiliconBeat

The board of dir, ectors at Applied Materials took more of the medicine it doled our to the company’s top executives earlier this week when they cut the size of their retainers by ten percent. The reduction is in addition to the 10 percent retainer reduction the board took in December and makes their pay cut the same as the 20 percent pay reduction the company’s senior officers have taken, according to a filing today with the SEC.

In September, the board’s compensation committee decided to raise the amount paid as a retainer to non-employee directors from Read the rest of this entry »

Beginning last Monday the brass at Santa Clara’s Applied Materials took their second 10 percent pay cut in less than a year “in order to reduce costs due to deteriorating global economic and industry conditions,” according to a filing today with the SEC.

Applied’s Chief executive Michael Splinter, who was making $980,000 a year at the start of the 2008 fiscal year in November 2007, after getting a Read the rest of this entry »

As part of the continued greening of Applied Materials — which last March announced the biggest deal in the company’s history when it said it received a $1.9 billion order for thin-film solar-panel production equipment for ”multiple solar factories,” — the Santa Clara company named Alexander “Andy” Karsner, a former Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy, to its board of directors last week.

He began serving on the board “effective immediately” and will serve on its Read the rest of this entry »

Randhir Thakur, who left Applied Materials in 2005 to join flash memory maker SanDisk, is rejoining the world’s largest manufacturer of chip-making equipment to become senior vice president and general manager of its s new initiative to develop equipment to be used in the production of chips used to harness solar power. Thakur had been an executive vice president at SanDisk in charge of its fab operations. Read the rest of this entry »

Time essentially ran out on some stock options held by several executives at Applied Materials (Ticker:AMAT). The options, granted in fiscal 2000 when the stock closed at its lowest price of the year, yielded pennies-per-share in profits when they were exercised earlier this month.

The company’s chairman and former chief executive, James Morgan, exercised and sold a hefty option good for 400,000 shares of the Santa Clara chip equipment maker on Oct. 5. He immediately sold the shares for $8.46 million, getting $21.16 per share. However, the exercise price for each share was $21.03, giving him a gross profit of 13 cents a share, or $52,200. Not counting the brokerage fee.

Morgan had little choice, as the options he exercised were scheduled to expire Oct. 18. The day before and after he sold, Applied’s shares closed below the options’ strike price. They ended Wednesday at $20.19, up 9 percent for the year but down more than 12 percent from 52-week high of $23 they hit on Aug. 8, a week before the company released its third quarter results. Unfortunately for Applied’s insiders, it was a period during which they were prohibited from selling.

The options were originally granted October 18, 2000 at a then 52-week low for the stock. Applied Materials, unlike many Silicon Valley companies, restricts the term of their option grants to seven years instead of the more common 10-year period.

Other executives who threw in the towel on the same options that day included its chief financial officer, George Davis, who exercised and sold 90,000 shares for a profit of $18,081 or 20 cents a share, and executive vice president Franz Jaker, who exercised and sold 80,000 shares for a profit of $7,158, or 9 cents a share.