Upheaval
The executive level manoeuvring continues at AMD. HEXUS can confirm that Alberto Macchi, formerly the corporate VP of sales and marketing EMEA and most senior EMEA executive, has disappeared from the company.
Our intelligence is that he has been ungraciously removed
and it doesn’t come as a complete surprise given the recent appointment of Emilio
Ghilardi as senior VP and general manager of AMD EMEA, a role that seemed to
position him as Macchi’s superior – hardly a show of support for Macchi by AMD.
Indeed HEXUS is very suprised at AMD's handling of this matter and we interpret the present lack of comment about Macchi's departure as rude to the extreme. Our insight is that this is a fairly broadly held view within the senior ranks of AMD.
All the more suprising, as we believe it inconceivable that such a decision, involving the departure of a very senior AMD player, would not have have passed by the desks of both CEO Hector Ruiz and COO Dirk Meyer.
Macchi joined AMD in March 2005 from Freescale Semiconductor as EMEA VP for sales. He was well respected within AMD, not just within the EMEA region but across the water too and his departure will be lamented by many internally.
We understand that Ghilardi, who isn’t expected to be in place until August, will report to Gustavo Arenas, who we are led to believe has been newly promoted to chief sales officer worldwide – a post that had remained unoccupied since Henri Richard left for, ironically, Freescale.
We wrote a couple of months ago of AMD EMEA being effectively split between power bases in Italy and Germany. If there is a power struggle between these two it would seem to be a fair assumption that it has now swung in favour of the German side.
The implications of a greater amount of decision making being done by Germany will be interesting to observe. It is felt that this might mark a more conservative approach, which isn't what a company competing with a much larger rival needs to be doing.
National implications may well come into play too; how will this affect AMD's relationships with Italian run Acer and German/Japanese Fujitsu Siemens? It's certainly a reasonable assumption that AMD's Ferrari sponsorship won't be renewed after one more season.
