Larry, Hi! I would make it a priority to get Dell's business. Ruiz is in Dell's backyard. :)Leigh
"Ruiz said he plans to keep his Austin home, and work out of offices in Austin and in AMD's Sunnyvale, Calif., corporate headquarters"
austin360.com
Technology
AMD plucks leader from Motorola
Hector Ruiz will serve as president, maybe future CEO
By Kirk Ladendorf
American-Statesman Staff
Posted: Jan. 26, 2000
In a stunning personnel move, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. on Tuesday named senior Motorola Inc. executive Hector Ruiz its new president and chief operating officer and likely successor to CEO W.J. ``Jerry' Sanders.
Ruiz, 54, has run Motorola's Austin-based worldwide semiconductor business since 1997, revamping the organization and attempting to shake up its entrenched culture.
He fills the No. 2 slot at AMD, which has been vacant for six months since the abrupt departure of Atiq Raza in July. Ruiz said he plans to keep his Austin home, and work out of offices in Austin and in AMD's Sunnyvale, Calif., corporate headquarters
Sanders had said he would not fill the job until his company became profitable again, which it accomplished in the fourth quarter. The 63-year-old Sanders has an employment contract that says he will remain CEO of Advanced Micro Devices until the end of 2001.
Motorola, in turn, named Fred Tucker, a longtime executive based at its Schaumburg, Ill., corporate headquarters as Ruiz's replacement. Tucker will split time between Schaumburg, Austin and Phoenix, which is Motorola's other major concentration of semiconductor workers. Tucker, a 34-year Motorola veteran, will not give up his current job, which is executive vice president and deputy to the office of the chief executive at Motorola headquarters.
The announcement appears to settle AMD's senior management ranks, while creating uncertainties about Motorola and the direction of its chip business. Motorola officials said their semiconductor business will continue operating as usual.
``It's a shocker,' said analyst Will Strauss with Forward Concepts of Tempe, Ariz., who added, ``there are still a lot of things that need to be done at Motorola.'
Ruiz took over Motorola's chip business in 1997 and began a difficult restructuring process that was complicated by an industry downturn. He revamped the management in the chip business and pushed it to focus on key markets and building customer relationships.
During his tenure, Motorola's 35,000-employee chip business went through a painful downsizing, exited some unprofitable businesses and sold its profitable Phoenix-based semiconductor business last summer. Motorola, which formerly bragged about having the industry's largest product line, now concentrates on selling chips for the networking, automotive and wireless markets.
Tucker, formerly a longtime general manager of Motorola's Automotive and Industrial Electronics Group, has not been actively involved in his company's chip business for more than a decade.
Motorola employs about 10,000 people in Austin, while AMD employs about 4,500 here.
Sanders said he wants to run the company he co-founded 31 years ago in ``collegial fashion' with Ruiz, while grooming Ruiz to be his ``likely successor.'
``My background has been strategic and marketing,' Sanders said. ``And Hector's background has been strategic and manufacturing, operations and engineering. We are a good fit. We both have good core values.'
Ruiz said his decision to leave Motorola, where he worked for 22 years, was a difficult one. He took it, he said, because of the opportunity to become Sanders' successor and run his own company.
``It seemed like a lot of fun to come here and help fight an 8,000-pound gorilla,' Ruiz said, referring to longtime AMD rival Intel Corp., which is the largest and richest company in the semiconductor industry. The two companies are ferocious competitors in the Windows-compatible microprocessor market, the most profitable semiconductor market.
Ruiz's move is between two companies with dramatically different operating styles. Motorola, a well-established Midwestern-based electronics company, is known as much for its fierce bureaucratic infighting as it is for its pioneering role in wireless communications.
At AMD, Ruiz will encounter a company that has been dominated from the beginning by one man, Sanders, whose personal flamboyance and scrappiness have made him one of the best known figures in the semiconductor industry.
Ruiz, by contrast, is a soft-spoken technical expert. He holds a doctorate in physics, the base on which the semiconductor industry is built.
Sanders and Ruiz became acquainted when AMD and Motorola negotiated a technology sharing agreement under which they would work together on researching advanced chip manufacturing technology. They continued to work together after that agreement was forged in the summer of 1998.
The announcement was made after the close of the stock market. Motorola's stock closed up $2.87 1/2 Tuesday at $142.12 1/2. AMD's stock gained nearly 16 percent on the day, closing at $40 a share, up $5.50.
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