SiliconBeat

Last week we noted that Hewlett-Packard’s longtime VP for government affairs, Gary Fazzino, had moved to a similar job at Applied Materials. This week comes word from HP that former Clinton administration commerce official Larry Irving will take over HP’s government affairs portfolio, working from Washington D.C.

Irving has a background in tech issues and ties to the new Obama administration. As an assistant commerce secretary in the Clinton administration, Irving worked on Internet and telecom policy and the issue of the “digital divide” that puts those without access to electronic information sources at economic and social disadvantage.

More recently, Irving ran his own consulting group and was an Obama transition advisor on Commerce and telecom issues.

HP’s new VP is a Stanford law  grad who also worked as a Congressional staffer in an earlier part of his career. He apparently still has friends on Capitol Hill; the HP announcement includes glowing quotes from GOP Rep. Joe Barton of Texas and Democratic Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts.

Hewlett-Packard’s long-time guru of government affairs is moving down the highway to Applied Materials. Gary Fazzino represented HP’s interests for 30 years at the local, state and national level. Now he’ll take on similar duties as a VP at Applied, working out of their Santa Clara headquarters.

Fazzino was  VP for government affairs at HP since 2000, but before that he served variously as the Palo Alto company’s Northwest public affairs manager, state government affairs manager and director of federal public policy for HP in Washington, D.C.

In his spare time, Fazzino ran for Palo Alto City Council and served five terms, including two stints as mayor. He also chaired the Santa Clara County Transportation Authority for a few years in the 1990s. And he was the founding president of TechNet, an industry group focused on government and public policy.

Applied has been expanding into solar energy and related markets, which are often influenced by government policies. CEO Mike Splinter said in a statement that “Gary’s proven ability to help shape public policy will be invaluable as we explore new markets and new lines of business.”

No word on what HP will do about replacing Fazzino. The company reportedly is looking for a chief lobbyist in Washington D.C., where it’s been combining its operation with that of EDS, the big tech services contractor that HP acquired last year.

In case you missed it, Applied Materials of Santa Clara, the world’s biggest manufacturer of equipment used to make computer chips, has trimmed its board members’ pay again in light of the dismal economy.

Following on its decision in December to cut the annual cash retainer of its non-employee directors by 10 percent, Applied recently reduced the retainer by another 10 percent.

For those of you counting, that whittles the board member’s individual retainer from $65,000 to $52,000.  Applied also has slashed 20 percent from the base salaries of its senior executives.

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 »