TI's chief economist retires as company
narrows its focus
By J. Robert Lineback
Semiconductor Business News
(09/30/98, 05:35:45 PM EDT)
An era of sorts has quietly come to anend at Texas Instruments Inc. in Dallas
with the earlyretirement of chief economist Vladi Catto, who often spoke
before trade group meetings and financial analysts about the impact of global
economic trends on the semiconductor industry.
Catto, who joined TI in 1970s as a financial analyst, had been TI's chief
economist since 1976. Like a number of other TI executives, Catto accepted
an early retirement package from the Dallas company, which has been
downsizing itself after selling off more than a half dozen businesses to focus
more heavily on digital signal processing solutions.
Along with Catto's retirement, TI has decided to no longer present broad
overviews of industry trends and global conditions impacting the growth of
semiconductors. For years, Catto's overview of economic conditions and
other market conditions effecting the chip business had been high points in TI
analyst and press briefings.
The move reflects how much TI has changed in the past 20 years. Two
decades ago, the Dallas company was the world's largest IC manufacturer,
pumping out a range of commodity building blocks, 4-bit microcontrollers and
memories. It also had large businesses in consumer electronics, defense
systems, computers and oil search services. After selling off most of its
non-semiconductor operations in the past three years, TI has narrowed its
focus further with the $800 million pending sale of its DRAM business to
Micron Technology Inc.
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Does anyone know why this sale is pending? Or is there a transfer date
or something like that. Just curious.. Maybe Mr. Catto will go to Micron,his services seem valuable at least for investors sake... |
