SAN JOSE — Cypress Semiconductor on Thursday named Hassane El-Khoury as its new president and chief executive, replacing the company’s founder, and so far only CEO, T.J. Rodgers.
El-Khoury was also named as a member of the semiconductor company’s board of directors.
El-Khoury is a nine-year veteran of Cypress, and helped shepherd the company’s acquisition of chipmaker Spansion in 2015, and this year’s purchase of Broadcom’s internet of things operations. Before joining Cypress in 2007, El-Khoury held several executive and management positions at Continental Automotive Systems.
“Cypress is at an inflection point,” El-Khoury said in a statement announcing his appointment as the company’s CEO. El-Khoury said the company will continue to expand its product reach into “growth markets such as automotive, industrial, consumer electronics and the IoT (internet of things.)”
Current Cypress board chairman, Ray Bingham, will now become the company’s executive chairman, but according to a Cypress statement, will maintain “a day-to-day role” with the company focusing on meeting with customers and investment opportunities.
The executive change at Cypress wasn’t a complete surprise. In April, Rodgers, who founded Cypress in 1982 and had served as its CEO since, said he planned to step down because, at 68 years old, he didn’t want to spend “the last decade of my career immersed in the details of the (company’s) operations.”
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Cypress shares fell by 3.5 percent to close Thursday at $10.92.
Contact Rex Crum at 408-278-3415. Follow him at Twitter.com/rexcrum
