Hedging bets
The take-over that has come up in the federal investigation, however, is that of AMD's spin-off of its manufacturing plants into separate company, GlobalFoundries, in a joint venture with an Abu Dhabi sovereign owned investment firm.
An AMD executive, identified by The Wall Street Journal as then AMD Chief Executive Hector Ruiz, apparently told hedge fund consultant and portfolio manager, Danielle Chiesi - another defendant - about the upcoming transaction and she allaegedly passed the message on to Rajaratnam.
Chiesi, who was also said to be getting information from ex-IBM executive Robert Moffat, also allegedly passed on news from her two sources about an Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund - Mubadala - which would subsequently invest in AMD.
Rajaratnam, Chiesi and Moffat have all proclaimed their innocence in the face of the current charges, while Ruiz hasn't been charged with any wrongdoing for his alleged role in the tip-offs.
However, shortly after the Wall Street Journal's revelations, GlobalFoundries abruptly announced that Ruiz would step down as chairman of Globalfoundries and went about clinically removing him from its website; something he was not supposed to do until January of 2010. Ruiz had previously served as Chairman and CEO of AMD, a role he held in 2006 and which he left in 2008.
As for the new evidence which seems to point to some shady business around the ATI acquisition, lawyers for both Chiesi and Moffat say they know nothing about such an investigation, whilst Ruiz's spokesman had no comment, either about Ruiz being the unnamed executive, or about whether there's any investigation into ATI trades.
So, that's that then...
