53.2 F
Laguna Hills
Thursday, Mar 28, 2024
-Advertisement-

Dwight Decker Gives Up Seat at Chipmaker Conexant

Dwight Decker, a local tech executive whose name once was synonymous with Newport Beach’s Conexant Systems Inc., gave up his board seat at the chipmaker.

Conexant announced a few weeks ago that Decker is set to retire from the company’s board.

The move marks a major hiatus for Decker, 60, who’s had a hand in Conexant’s fate since he led the chipmaker as a unit of Rockwell International Corp. in the 1990s.

He headed the company’s spinoff from Rockwell as Conexant in 1999 and ran it as chief executive and chairman for five years.

Decker tried to step back in 2004 but returned in 2005 after a botched combination of Conexant with New Jersey’s GlobespanVirata Inc.

After a rough executive transition that saw one chief executive come and go within a year, Decker handed over the top spot to Scott Mercer, a longtime board member, in 2008.

Decker resigned as the company’s non-executive chairman and has served as a director since then.

“Retiring from the Conexant board concludes a chapter in my life that began when I joined Rockwell more than two decades ago,” Decker said. “With the company’s capital-structure issues now resolved and a solid foundation in place for future success, the time is right for me to step away.”

Decker serves on the boards of El Segundo-based chipmaker International Rectifier Corp., Newport Beach’s Mindspeed Technologies Inc. and Pacific Mutual Holding Co., the parent of Newport Beach’s Pacific Life Insurance Co.

Decker is involved with the University of California, Irvine, where he helped establish the UC Irvine Center for Pervasive Communications.

He is also past chairman of the trade group Global Semiconductor Alliance and a former board member of the Semiconductor Industry Association, which represents the chip industry.

Decker also is a founder of Aliso Viejo’s Octane, a booster group for technology and biotechnology startups in Orange County.

He’s active in politics with the New Majority, a moderate Republican group.

Sage Sales Slip

Irvine’s Sage Software Inc., a maker of business software, saw sales slip for the six months through March, capping two years of declines.

Sage, the North American unit of Britain’s Sage Group PLC, makes software that does accounting, tracks customers and handles payroll and other back-office functions.

Sage’s North American sales for the six months through March were $429 million, down 6% from a year earlier. The North America business unit didn’t report profits.

Sage’s British parent saw sales of $1.1 billion, down 3% from the same period a year earlier.

It reported earnings before interest, taxes and amortization of $289 million.

Sage has been hit hard during the downturn as many of its small-business customers opt to hold on to their cash and defer payments and purchasing decisions.

Chief Executive Sue Swenson, who came on board in 2007, has cut hundreds of jobs across Sage’s disparate business units. She’s also hired a handful of executives in Irvine, where there’s some 400 workers.

In 2008, Irvine’s Blizzard Entertainment Inc., the top maker of online video games, surpassed Sage as OC’s biggest software company by sales.

QMS Bought

Irvine-based Quantitative Micro Software LLC, a maker of statistics, modeling and forecasting software, was bought by Colorado’s IHS Inc. earlier this month for about $40 million.

QMS, which started in 1984, develops a software package used for statistics, forecasting and modeling by corporations, government agencies and researchers.

The first QMS product, called MicroTSP software, was one of the first forecasting and analytical software products available for the PC. MicroTSP was replaced by the Windows-based EViews in 1994.

IHS, which had a recent market value of $3.3 billion, does market research and analysis.

Finance Chief for Kofax

Kofax PLC, an Irvine-based maker of scanning software that helps companies cut down on paper, recently appointed a finance chief.

James “Jamie” Arnold Jr. is set to start as Kofax’s chief financial officer next month. He will replace Stefan Gaiser, who will continue on at Kofax through the end of the year to ensure a smooth transition.

Arnold also will get a board seat pending a vote, the company said.

Kofax makes scanning software used by businesses to improve workflow processes and speed up productivity.

The software collects paper documents, forms, invoices, e-mail and photos and or-ganizes them into a searchable database of files.

Arnold most recently was chief financial officer at Burlington, Mass.-based Nuance Communications Inc., where he helped grow yearly revenue from less than $200 million to $900 million in a few years.

Before that, he did a short stint as corporate controller at San Jose chipmaker Cadence Design Systems Inc.

He’s held several senior finance positions at Informix Software Inc. and Centura Software Corp.

Kofax, which got its start in Irvine in 1985, has about 400 workers here and some 1,200 in all. The company is publicly traded in London but its executives are mainly in Irvine.

It sees about $400 million in yearly sales.

Want more from the best local business newspaper in the country?

Sign-up for our FREE Daily eNews update to get the latest Orange County news delivered right to your inbox!

-Advertisement-

Featured Articles

-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-

Related Articles

-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-