Trident Microsystems said it has finally received notice from Spencer Capital Opportunity Fund of identity of the two nominees Spencer has said it wants to nominate to the chip maker’s board of directors. The names of the dissident nominees were not released.
The New York based investment company had put Trident on notice of its intention to nominate its own candidates earlier this year when Read the rest of this entry »
Trident Microsystems shares got hammered after hours on Monday after the company reported a slew of news, including results for its fiscal 2008 fourth quarter and guidance for its current quarter, a 10-year extension of its shareholder rights plan (AKA poison pill), and the permanent appointment of the company’s previously interim chief financial officer. Read the rest of this entry »
Trident Microsystems is paying extra to make sure that its former president, Jung-Herng Chang, doesn’t go back to work anytime soon. At least not for any company that makes, sells, distributes, services or pretty much has anything to do with anything Trident is involved in or plans to be involved in.
For that, he will be paid $8,333 per month (100K for the year) in addition to the $25,000 (300K for the year) he will get for the de rigueur consulting gig for the next year, along with continued group health insurance coverage during that time, according to an SEC filing.
Chang made $9.4 million in the last fiscal year exercising his option to buy and then sell
519,000 Trident shares. He was also given a $150,000 bonus to reward him for his work helping the board’s investigation into Trident’s historical stock option practices, which resulted in the departure of the company’s chief executive and two board members, and the restatement of Trident’s results from 1993 through 2005 to account for $51.9 million in additional compensation expense.
Trident Microsystems can’t catch a break these days. Now its chief financial officer, Jon
Edmunds, is quitting to join Inphi, a privately-held fabless high speed analog components
company in Southern California, according to an SEC filing Wednesday afternoon.
Last week Trident’s stock fell nearly 12 percent after Goldman Sachs downgraded its rating on the stock. The next day the stock made back most of that when investors bid up its shares in hopes that it might be a takeover target in the wake of STMicro’s acquisition of another Silicon Valley chip maker, Genesis Microchip.
That bump was short-lived, however. A second analyst at Roth Capital cut his rating on the stock Tuesday, and its shares fell back to where the were the week before.
In October, Trident’s shares fell the most since their initial public offering in December
1992 after the company forecast earnings for its fiscal 2008 second quarter that were more than 20 percent lower than analysts had expected.
And in August, the company revealed that both the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange had launched formal investigations into its stock option granting practices.
According to its own internal investigation, Trident determined that the dates of 57 percent of option grants awarded from its initial public offering in December 1992 through June 2006, covering about 38 million shares, were incorrect.
Trident expects to name a replacement for Edmunds before his last day with the company on Jan. 11.
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