History Cypress_Semiconductor

1 history

1.1 founding , years
1.2 2015: spansion-cypress merger
1.3 2016
1.4 2017 board dispute

history
founding , years

it founded t. j. rodgers , others (fritz beyerlein, fred jenne, steven h. kaplan, r. michael starnes , lowell turriff ) advanced micro devices. formed in 1982 backing sevin rosen , went public in 1986. company focused on design , development of high speed cmos srams, eeproms, pal devices, , ttl logic devices. 2 years after going public company switched nasdaq new york stock exchange. in october 2009, company announced switch listing nasdaq on november 12, 2009.

the cypress subsidiary agigatech, inc. sells non-volatile random-access memory (ram) , based in san diego, ca. acquired during simtek purchase in august 2008, , marks second time cypress acquired start-up venture founder, ron sartore, co-founded anchor chips.

in november 2011, cypress backed packaging firm called deca technologies, inc.

2015: spansion-cypress merger

in december 2014, cypress semiconductor merged spansion in all-stock deal worth $1.59 billion. merger represented combination of 2 companies no. 1 in respective memory markets , have diversified embedded processing.

in march 2015, cypress , spansion closed merger in all-stock, tax-free transaction valued @ approximately $5 billion. cypress shareholders approved issuance of 2.457 shares of cypress stock spansion shareholders each spansion share own. merger expected achieve more $135 million in cost synergies on annualized basis within 3 years , accretive non-gaap earnings within first full year after transaction closes. @ time of merger spansion in 2015, cypress semiconductor had more 7,000 , foreign patents. cypress semiconductor component of ocean tomo 300 patent index.

cypress attempted acquire integrated silicon solution inc. in 2015 thwarted competing bid chinese buyer consortium uphill investment co., included gigadevice, major competitor in nor flash market. buyer consortium offered higher bid cypress , acquired issi $731 million.

2016

in april 2016, cypress announced acquisition of broadcom’s wireless internet of things (iot) business , related assets in all-cash transaction valued @ $550 million. under terms of deal, cypress acquire broadcom s wi-fi, bluetooth , zigbee iot product lines , intellectual property, along wiced brand , developer ecosystem.

in april 2016, announced advanced semiconductor engineering, inc. invest $60 million in deca , license deca’s m-series fan-out wafer-level packaging (fowlp) technologies , processes. part of agreement, ase group , deca jointly develop m-series fan-out manufacturing process , expand production of chip-scale packages using technology.

cypress named hassane el-khoury president , chief executive officer, , announced join board of directors on aug. 11, 2016.

2017 board dispute

in april 2017 delaware chancery court decided cypress semiconductor corp. had give former ceo rodgers insight internal documents related possible violations of cypress s code of business conduct , ethics executive chairman ray bingham.

bingham, founding member of venture capital firm canyon bridge capital partners inc, china state-backed private equity fund, criticized conflict of interest leading cypress , canyon bridge both companies possibly focus on same acquisition targets.

rodgers ran proxy contest against board, aiming veteran tech industry board directors daniel mccranie , camillo martino replace ray bingham , cypress director eric benhamou.

on june 12, 2017 made public ray bingham stepped down board. prior bingham’s resignation, shareholder-advisory firms iss, glass lewis , egan-jones had recommended mccranie , martino, rodgers s nominees, citing additional - , sharper - questions not regarding board s handling of situation regarding potential conflicts of interest inherent in bingham s dual roles.

on june 20, 2017, both of rodgers s nominees won victories substantial margins.