C-level shifts: Intel, Freescale, InterDigital bring on new execs

Intel’s new CMO: from razors to chips
Intel has a very strong history of promoting from within, but the chip giant has looked beyond its Santa Clara, Calif., campus for its new chief marketing officer. Steve Fund comes most recently from Staples, where he led a team of 300 people as SVP of global marketing. Before that, Fund worked at Procter & Gamble, a company long considered one of the nation’s savviest marketers. Fund oversaw the Gillette Fusion, taking the razor to $1 billion in annual net sales faster than any product in the company’s history.
Fund has also held marketing positions at Lycos, a onetime competitor to Google, and at PepsiCo. He started his career in the consulting program at McKinsey & Company.
Deborah Conrad, Intel’s former CMO, announced her plans to leave the company in March. She is credited with leading the team that developed Intel’s partnership with Apple, and with launching the company’s “Look Inside” marketing campaign. Conrad achieved these and other accomplishments against the backdrop of breast cancer, which she beat in 2012.
Freescale brings on M&A expert as new CFO
Freescale’s new CFO is Dan Durn, a former investment banker who specialized in mergers and acquisitions involving semiconductor companies. Durn was a member of the merger leadership group at Goldman Sachs, where he reportedly worked on the purchase of Avago by KKR and Silver Lake, as well as ARM’s purchase of Artisan Holdings and the sale of Agere to LSI.
After leaving Goldman Sachs, Durn was head of M&A and strategy at Advanced Technology Investment Company, and then he took the role of CFO at one of the companies ATIC had invested in, chipmaker Global Foundries.
Durn replaces Alan Campbell, who has been with Freescale for 34 years. Campbell saw Freescale through a financial roller coaster ride that included an initial public offering in 2004 when the company separated from Motorola, followed by a leveraged buyout by private equity firms in 2006. Two years later those firms again took Freescale public, but at a valuation below the price they had paid for the company. Freescale is still saddled with significant debt from the 2006 buyout, meaning that Durn will have his work cut out for him if he tries to approach the M&A market as either a buyer or a seller.
InterDigital hires former FCC division chief as CTO
InterDigital hired Dr. Byung K. Yi as CTO and head of InterDigital Labs. Yi comes from the Federal Communications Commission, where he served as assistant division chief of engineering. Prior to that, Yi headed up LG’s North American research and development center.
Yi’s focus will be wireless standards research, a process in which InterDigital has been a key player for many years. The company’s primary revenue source is patent licensing, and standards research and patent research go hand-in-hand.
CEO Bill Merritt told RCR Wireless News that he looks forward to significant progress under Yi’s leadership, and believes that putting Yi in charge of research will free up other corporate resources to expand InterDigital’s focus into the commercial realm. James Nolan, who has previously led InterDigital Labs, will now lead InterDigital Solutions, the company’s unit focused on taking advanced technologies towards commercialization via partnerships. Allen Proithis, formerly head of InterDigital Solutions, will assume leadership of a significant effort focused entirely on “Internet of things” and machine-to-machine communications.
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