Gemplus founder Dr. Marc Lassus (Various):
Dr. Marc Lassus is Chairman of the Board (and a Director) of Gemplus International SA.
Video clip of Marc with his "sunflower":
geequity.com
>> The Stars of Europe
Businessweek Online
Intrenational Edition
June 12, 2000
businessweek.com
50 Leaders at the Forefront of Change
Marc Lassus
Marc Lassus doesn't take ''no'' for an answer. In the 1980s, his engineering team at France's Thomson Semiconductors developed a prototype ''smart card'' with a microchip to store data and record transactions. But he couldn't persuade his bosses to manufacture it. So in 1988, with Thomson's blessing, he started his own company, Gemplus. Today, it's the world's biggest manufacturer of smart chips, used in everything from cell phones to credit cards. Sales topped $817 million last year.
Lassus, 61, is now developing chips for computers and Web-enabled cell phones that will carry out e-commerce transactions and prevent fraud. To finance his ambitions, Lassus recently snared a $500 million investment from the Texas Pacific Group, a private equity firm.
His challenge is to keep smart chips from becoming a low-margin commodity. ''The key is to develop value-added products,'' he says. ''And if we don't do it, somebody else will.'' Lassus should know: After all, Gemplus got its start by grabbing an opportunity that Thomson passed up. <<
Excerpt from an article discussing Gemplus founder, Dr. Marc Lassus, who after the GEMP IPO still holds 99 million shares (16.5%) of The company:
>> "The World Gets in Touch with Its Inner American"
Globalization was supposed to have give-and-take. But free market capitalism and high-tech communications have, for better or worse, turned the world on to just one culture -- ours.
Pascal Zachary
Jan./Feb. 1999
The MoJo Wire
motherjones.com
<snip>
Halfway around the globe in Provence, France, I meet another enthusiast of all things American, Marc Lassus. He is the chief of Gemplus, a manufacturer of "smart cards," which can be used as electronic money to purchase telephone time or to store information such as medical records. It's nearly midnight, and I watch him exhort his factory workers to act more American. The typical French executive treats manual laborers with veiled contempt, but Lassus revels in them, working the factory floor like a politician. He betrays his nationality only when it comes to greeting the female machine operators: He kisses them lustily.
Lassus fights the impulse to be, in his words, "too Frenchie." Incredibly, he often speaks English on the job and encourages his co-workers to do the same. The company's marketing materials are expressly written in American English, by writers imported from California's Silicon Valley. Lassus has hired an American number-cruncher to push the idea that the bottom line matters as much in France as it does in the States. Because the French are famously chauvinistic, I am astonished by Lassus' frank admiration of American ways. His e-mail handle says it all: John Wayne. <<
And another excerpt:
>> Gemplus Going American
Wall Street Journal
8th June 1998
Front Page Coverage
"The model we have to copy is American, not French" declares Marc Lassus, chairman of Gemplus SCA. His French listeners seem skeptical, even insulted, but Mr. Lassus is unfazed. Gemplus is the world's largest maker of so-called smart cards, and to keep it that way, Mr. Lassus constantly goads employees to become more service-oriented. He flies off the handle every time he sees one of his countrymen behaving, as he puts it, "too Frenchie." He has ordered his French employees to speak English on the job, hired American executives, declared war on French unions and the social-welfare state, expanded production in low-wage countries and plans an initial public offering of stock in the U.S. last year. Mr. Lassus plans to do the same eventually. But he's clear on the stakes. If Gemplus can't adapt to U.S. techniques, " we die."
(For full article, get a copy of Wall Street Journal 8th June 1998 front page coverage.)
The Gemplus prospectus shows Marc as holding 104,513,079 shares of Gemplus before the IPO and 94,513,079 after. But this was reported a week before the IPO:
Gemplus Founder To Hold Back 5M Shrs From IPO
Greg Keller
Dow Jones Newswires
Marc Lassus, founder of Luxembourg-registered smart-card maker Gemplus International SA (F.GPS), will sell only half of the 10 million shares he had planned to sell in the company's initial public offering because he thinks the new price is too low, bankers close to the deal said Monday.
Gemplus will sell about 71.7 million shares in the IPO, scheduled for this week, rather than the 78.4 million originally planned, according to a filing Monday from stock exchange operator Euronext Paris. Of the approximately 6.7 million shares being held back, 5 million belong to Lassus, according to a banker close to the deal.
Lassus is said to be unhappy with the price being asked for the shares in the company he founded in 1988.
The company put out a press release Sunday saying that the price range for the shares had been cut to EUR5.75-EUR6.25 from EUR7.25-EUR8.25.
The company cited "unfavorable market conditions" especially on Nasdaq, as the reason for the change. The company also extended the offering's close, which was to have been Monday, until Wednesday.
A Gemplus spokesman confirmed that Lassus will be selling fewer shares than originally planned and explained the absence of this information from Sunday's announcement on the grounds that details of the revised offering weren't finalized yet. <<
Note: There are currently 6,683,000 shares of GEMP outstanding.
- Eric - |
