SiliconBeat

Silicon Graphics will have its shares delisted from the Nasdaq stock market beginning Thursday morning, according to an SEC filing it made Monday. The news was delivered last week to the Sunnyvale computer maker in a letter from Nasdaq that said the company had failed to become compliant with a rule that the company maintain Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Rackable Systems, the Fremont provider of data-center servers and storage products, lowered its guidance for its 2008 fiscal year financial results, citing a “dramatic” market downturn. Sales for 2008 are now expected to be no more than $300 million and as low as $275 billion. That’s far below  the $331 to $364 million range estimated by analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters. Rackable also expects a big loss of between $1.46 to $1.26 per share compared with the 5 to 10 cent analysts had previously expected.

“The recent market downturn has been Read the rest of this entry »

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Rackable Systems, the Milpitas maker of energy-efficient servers used in data centers, said earlier this week that results from its shareholder meeting late last month show that it prevailed over dissident shareholder Richard Leza.

Leza was so incensed by the compensation doled out by the board over the last year — including stock-based pay for the company’s new chief executive valued at nearly $13million — that he invested a good deal of his own time and money to wage a proxy battle tohave himself and another outside candidate elected to Rackable’s board, and to pass a proposal he made to give shareholders an opportunity each year approve the top executive’s pay. Read the rest of this entry »

On the eve of a potentially contentious shareholder meeting, Rackable Systems said its management spotted an error in its previously published financial report for its fiscal 2008 second quarter, which “should no longer be relied on.” It turns out that after reviewing various account reconciliations, the company was less unprofitable than previously reported. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in February, we blogged that Richard Leza Jr. of Sierra Madre, who owns 2,600 shares of Rackable Systems, had asked the company to nominate himself and Steve Montoya of Los Gatos to its board of directors, according to an SEC filing. He also submitted a proposal to have shareholders approve executive pay.

On Tuesday, shareholders received more details of the nominations, along with Leza’s argument on behalf of his pay proposal in a proxy filed by Leza: Read the rest of this entry »

Richard Leza Jr. of Sierra Madre, who owns 2,600 shares of Rackable Systems, asked the company to nominate himself and Steve Montoya of Los Gatos to its board of directors, according to a filing the company made with the SEC Friday. He also submitted a resolution to the company related to stockholder approval of executive compensation at Rackable, which makes server and storage products for use in large data centers.
Rackable’s chairman, Richard Verdoorn, said the board would “review and evaluate” the proposals, and pointed out that Rackable has, over the past nine months, “”recruited a number of new senior executives, including new CEO Mark J. Barrenechea, as well as two new highly qualified independent directors.”

Leza earned his Stanford MBA in 1995. His father, Richard Leza Sr., is the founder and chief executive of the venture firm AI Research and co-founder of Hispanic-net, an online network designed for Hispanics in technology, on which Montoya has made numerous posts related to clean technology.