Amd
Ruiz, 63, is the Advanced Micro Devices Inc. executive government prosecutors say provided nonpublic information to Danielle Chiesi, who is alleged to be part of the Galleon insider-trading ring, a person familiar with the matter said yesterday.
An engineer with masters and doctorate degrees, Ruiz was appointed as AMDs second chief executive officer in 2002, succeeding Jerry Sanders, who founded the company in 1969. Ruiz brought a soft-spoken style to the companys top job, a contrast to the designer suits and cowboy boots of his predecessor. They shared a common desire: to challenge Intel in the $32 billion market for microprocessors, the brains that run personal computers.
“He fought the underdog fight for years against Intel,” said Roger Kay, an analyst with Endpoint Technologies Associates in Wayland, Massachusetts. “He was a hard-charging executive, take-no-prisoners type.”
Ruiz, who stepped down as AMDs CEO last year, was instrumental in the companys plan to spin off its manufacturing plants, a strategy he called “asset smart.” He became chairman of Globalfoundries Inc., the new company created from the spinoff.
Plant Spinoff
Prosecutors released fragments of recorded conversations between Chiesi, a former Bear Stearns Asset Management official, and an AMD executive, in which they allegedly discussed the timing of the spinoff of AMDs plants. The unnamed executive told Chiesi about the transaction in September 2008, ahead of the announcement of the deal, according to court documents.
Ruiz hasnt been charged with wrongdoing in the case, and prosecutors dont say he profited from insider trading. Ruiz declined to comment, said Jon Carvill, a spokesman for Sunnyvale, California-based Globalfoundries. Ruiz is sill the companys chairman, Carvill said yesterday.
As a child, Ruiz walked across the border each day from his home in Piedras Negras, Mexico, to a high school in the South Texas town of Eagle Pass, according to a profile on Rice Universitys Web site. Even though he didnt start learning English until he was 16, Ruiz graduated as valedictorian of his senior class.
Engineering Degrees
He earned bachelors and masters degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, and a doctorate in engineering from Rice University in Houston in 1973. That opened the door to positions at Texas Instruments Inc. and then Motorola Inc., where Ruiz became the head of its semiconductor division. Sanders hired Ruiz from Motorola in 2000 to groom him as a successor.
“Hector is one of the most respected figures in the industry,” said Dan Hutcheson, head of VLSI Research, a semiconductor research company in Santa Clara, California. “Hes a very quiet person and very methodical, and tends to be pretty analytical.”
Flying High
In February 2003, Ruiz put his vision for the computer-chip maker on paper: He presented employees a mock magazine cover with the headline, “Flying High: AMDs Amazing Rise to the Top.”
By introducing new technology for server chips ahead of Intel, AMD boosted its share in that market from less than 4 percent to 22 percent in the fourth quarter of 2006, according to figures from Mercury Research in Cave Creek, Arizona.
Ruiz wasnt afraid to cut businesses that werent performing. In 2005, AMD spun off its memory-chip division after Ruiz had described its losses on a conference call as making him “puke.”
Ruiz received total compensation of $2.97 million in 2008, the year he left AMD. That included $1.12 million in salary and $1.36 million in option awards, according to the companys proxy filing. He was awarded a retirement bonus of $4.4 million and got a lump-sum payment of $3 million for successfully completing the Globalfoundries spinoff.
ATI Debt
AMDs gains against Intel stalled after it struggled to introduce new chips quickly enough to match its rival. By the end of 2008, when Ruiz left, AMD had reported nine straight quarters of losses. The company was saddled with $5.4 billion in debt after the acquisition of graphics-chip maker ATI Technologies Inc. in 2006.