Newport Beach chipmaker Conexant Systems Inc. plans to keep its top guy in place as chief executive under its new private equity parent.
Conexant President and Chief Operating Officer Sailesh Chittipeddi is set to run the chipmaker as chief executive officer and have a board seat, according to a regulatory filing.
The move helps answer a lingering question after San Francisco private equity firm Golden Gate Private Equity Inc. agreed last month to take Conexant private in a $282 million buyout.
Golden Gate prevailed in a brief contest with Hauppauge, N.Y.-based chipmaker Standard Microsystems Corp., which offered $270 million for Conexant in January and opted not to up its offer last month.
Chittipeddi’s set to start when the deal closes in the second quarter.
“Once the transaction with Golden Gate is completed, we expect Sailesh Chittipeddi, currently Conexant’s president and chief operating officer, to continue in a similar senior management position,” Chief Executive Scott Mercer said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
Mercer, who’s led the restructuring at Conexant that drew the buyout interest, is stepping down.
A native of India, Chittipeddi, 48, came to the U.S. in 1981.
Before Conexant, he spent nearly two decades in senior engineering and operations positions with Agere Systems Inc., now part of Milpitas-based LSI Corp.
He also worked for New Jersey’s Alcatel-Lucent and research units of AT&T Inc.
Chittipeddi—who’s named on 61 chip patents—has master’s degrees in physics and business as well as a doctorate in physics.
He lives in Tustin Ranch with his wife and twin toddlers.
Under the initial deal with Standard, Chittipeddi was set to run the business and take on a larger companywide engineering role.
When Golden Gate entered the scene, some company watchers suspected it would bring in one of its own to run Conexant.
Dan Artusi, a former chief executive at Conexant who was ousted a few years back, now is an operating executive at Golden Gate.
He’s believed to be a key force behind the Conexant acquisition and was thought to be a likely candidate to run it.
Artusi is set to get a seat on Conexant’s board.
He led Conexant for about nine months until early 2008, making some drastic changes during his stint.
He brought in executives, cut some 700 jobs and stopped funding chip programs that were slow to grow or weren’t profitable.
Artusi left Conexant in what some said was a clash with Conexant’s formative former chief executive, Dwight Decker, and other directors over the pace of restructuring.
Conexant makes chips for multifunction office printers, digital picture frames, PC speakers and other devices, and has annual revenue of $200 million.
