SiliconBeat

Two days after telling the Securities and Exchange Commission it would be late in filing its annual financial report with the agency, AXT reported today that its chief financial officer and chairman of its board, Philip Yin, has quit “to pursue other opportunities, effective immediately.”

Yin, 67, became CEO of the Fremont maker of materials used in semiconductors in March 2005 and joined its board as chairman the next month. Details of any severance payment were Read the rest of this entry »

Cypress Semiconductor will be cutting pay of “all applicable employees, including executive officers” on a sliding scale, at the beginning of its next fiscal quarter. In connection with the plan, executives will have their base salary reduced between 9 percent and 11 percent, the San Jose chip maker said in a filing today.

In the same filing, the company also reported that, after evaluating the company’s financial performance and each executive’s performance in relation to Read the rest of this entry »

Advanced Micro Devices adjourned a special meeting of its stockholders intended to let them vote on its plan to spin-off its manufacturing plants into a separate entity as part of an investment from the Abu Dhabi government.

The vote was to take place this morning at the Hilton Austin Airport in Texas because the company didn’t have enough  Read the rest of this entry »

Marvell Technology Group, the chip maker headquartered in the Bahamas with operations out of Santa Clara, became the latest chip maker to ratchet down expectations. The company now expects sales for its fiscal 2009 fourth quarter ending Jan. 31 to be in a range of $500-$520 million, down about 28 percent from its previous projection of $690-$720 million.

“The current macro economic environment is having a significant negative impact on our business,” said Marvell Chief Executive Sehat Sutardja in a statement. “There is a great deal of uncertainty surrounding the duration and depth of the current worldwide economic slow-down. This is especially true within the PC and the consumer electronics markets.

“While visibility into future demand in these markets remains uncertain, it is clear an inventory correction process is underway in the near term. Consequently, we will continue to take actions to re-align our expense profile to the current environment.”

LSI reorganized its semiconductor business, consolidating both its storage and its networking chips businesses ino one “semiconductor solutions” group reporting to Jeffrey Richardson, who was made an executive vice president and general manager. Philip Brace, who used to head up Read the rest of this entry »

Intel said Wednesday it would restructure its manufacturing operations, halting production at five older factories. The company will also close two existing assembly test facilities in Malaysia and the Phillipines.

The chip maker said it expects the restructuring will affect between 5,000 and 6,000 employees, although not all would necessarily lose their jobs as the company siad some would be offered positions at other facilities.

The move comes on top of rumors that Intel may post its first quarterly net loss in 22 years when it releases results in April for its current quarter.

John Gifford, who founded analog chip maker Maxim Integrated Products and served as its chief executive until his retirement in 2007, passed away Sunday of an apparent heart attack, according to a company press release distributed Monday.

Gifford was born in 1941 and grew up in Los Angeles. After graduating from UCLA in 1963 with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, he worked for Fairchild Semiconductor, first in sales in L.A. and later in marketing in Silicon Valley.

An industry legend, Gifford was one of the many engineers Read the rest of this entry »

Mattson Technology of Fremont is the latest chip-equipment maker to announce layoffs as it begins a “reorganization of its structure to reflect changes in anticipated levels of business,” according to a filing it made today after the markets closed. (Earlier Tuesday Novellus Systems said it had decided to cut 10 percent of its staff as it lowered profits forecast for the second time in three weeks.)

Mattson said it will “reduce approximately Read the rest of this entry »

Vahid Manian, a senior vice president of Broadcom and the head of its manufacturing operations, had his employment with the company “terminated” today, according to a terse regulatory filing. The company said it has begun a search to find his successor. The termination came after “questions surfaced about the validity of academic degrees listed in his company biography,” according to a Bloomberg News report.

Bloomberg reported that Manian didn’t earn degrees from the University of California at Irvine that are cited on the company’s Web site, according to the schools registrar. Broadcom’s Web site said Manian had bachelors and masters of business administration degrees from the University of California at Irvine, according to the Bloomberg report. The executive attended the school between September 1979 and August 1983 but wasn’t awarded any degrees,  according to the report citing Mark Fonseca, who is responsible for privacy issues in the school’s registrar’s office.

Manian joined Broadcom in 1996 as director of operations and became vice president of operations the following year. He was elevated to his most recent position in 2005.

Manian was also recently elected vice chairman of Read the rest of this entry »

Intersil, the Milpitas chip maker, said Chief Financial Officer David Zinsner has resigned  “to pursue another opportunity.” His replacement, effective immediately, is the company’s current corporate controller, Jonathan Kennedy,  who joined Intersil in 2004 as director of finance, according to a regulatory filing this afternoon.

Zinser, who joined Intersil in 1999 as its corporate treasurer and became CFO in July 2005, will remain an employee of the company through a transition period. No word yet on what or where his new opportunity is.

Intersil’s former chief executive, Richard Beyer, also quit earlier this year citing the chance to “pursue another opportunity.” He was named CEO of Freescale Semiconductor, an Austin-based chip maker focused on analog devices. In October, Beyer told Bloomberg News that he thought chances for a chip recovery in the second half of next year “optimistic”.