Musical chairs at ST Ericsson
Chief exec moves after seven months
Alain Dugheil, who's been running ST-Ericsson since its creation in February, has been shuffled back into his COO role to make space for ex-TI-VP Gilles Delfassy.
Gilles Delfassy retired from Texas Instruments in 2007, having attained the position of Senior Vice President, but come November he'll be back behind a desk running ST-Ericsson, in fierce competition with his former employer.
Alain Dutheil, meanwhile, returns to his position as COO: apparently his work as "transitional boss" is complete, though he does now get a position on the ST-Ericsson board. That board will be headed up by the new CEO of Ericsson, Hans Vestberg, as the parent company lost its own head (Carl-Henric Svanberg) a couple of months back.
ST-Ericsson was set up earlier this year - a joint effort backed by STMicro and Ericsson - since which it has been losing money at a rate of knots while it tries to get itself into shape and adapted to the changing economy.
Aside from boardroom musical chairs, the company today announced its latest 45 nanometre chip: a combined Bluetooth/GPS/FM transceiver designed to slip into the next generation of smartphones, which Mr. Delfassy will no doubt be hawking round to his old contacts over the next few months. ®
