Funny how the announcement that AMD is coming to
Malta grabbed multiple headlines, but the revelation that maybe
things aren’t going as planned barely gets mentioned. Also,
note the attempt at historical revisionism in the last paragraph.
I thought we were going to follow a tight schedule. I must have heard
wrong...
AMD Plans Won’t Come Until 2007
Utility, road work for facility in Luther forest park on track
The Daily Gazette, August 31, 2006
Page B3
Advanced Micro Devices won’t submit plans for its $3.2 billion
semiconductor plant to town officials before next summer, a top Saratoga
County economic development official said.
“It won’t happen any earlier than that,” said
Kenneth A. Green, president of the Saratoga Economic Development
Corp., which owns the 1,350-acre Luther forest Technology Campus
through a subsidiary.
Meanwhile, Green said, plans are on or ahead of schedule to bring
water, sewer, power lines, communications infrastructure and roads
needed for the high-tech factory to the technology campus, which
remains heavily wooded and mostly undeveloped.
Green made his comments Tuesday while meeting with representatives
of the towns of Malta and Stillwater, who gathered to discuss coordination
of their planning efforts because the tech park property is in both
towns.
Each town approved the property for computer chip manufacturing
in 2004, and that was followed by an intensive effort to find a major
tenant for the site.
State leaders and Sunnyvale, Calif.-based AMD announced in June
that they’d reached a non-binding agreement for AMD to build
a factory that would employ 1,200 people, with construction starting
sometime between mid-2007 and mid-2009.
Meanwhile, Intel is moving to grab a bigger share of the shrinking
chip market... by laying off ten percent of its work force! No, I
don’t understand how that is supposed to work, but I trust
that Intel knows how to conduct business. So, how long until AMD
starts laying off?
Intel To Cut 10,500 Jobs
Associated Press Sept. 5, 2006
SAN JOSE, California (AP) -- Chip-maker Intel Corp. said it will
eliminate 10,500 jobs -- about 10 percent of its work force -- through
layoffs, attrition and the sale of underperforming business groups
as part of a massive restructuring.
The world's largest chip maker said Tuesday most of the job cuts
this year will come from its management, marketing and information
technology ranks, and will expand in 2007 to include manufacturing,
design and other segments.
The cuts are expected to save the company $3 billion (euro2.34 billion)
per year by 2008. Severance costs are expected to total $200 million
(euro156.13 million).
The Santa Clara, California-based company is fighting to reverse
sinking profits and make it more efficient as it seeks to regain
market share stolen by smaller rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
"These actions, while difficult, are essential to Intel becoming
a more agile and efficient company, not just for this year or the
next, but for years to come," Chief Executive Paul Otellini
said in a statement.
About 5,000 of the affected positions have already been cut or will
be eliminated this year through a previously announced management
layoff, the pending sale of two businesses, and attrition, said Intel
spokesman Chuck Mulloy.
The company plans to cut about 2,500 more jobs by the end of the
year. The remainder will be shed in 2007, when Intel's head count
will settle around 92,000, Mulloy said.
Before the announcement, shares of Intel rose 11 cents to close
at $19.99 Tuesday on the Nasdaq Stock Market. In after-hours trading,
shares fell 26 cents to $19.73.
Many analysts and investors were expecting higher job cuts and a
better-defined strategy for dealing with problem business units,
said Nathan Brookwood, analyst with research firm Insight 64.
"This is not nearly as deep or as broad a cut as many had anticipated," he
said. "They aren't talking about cutting back any substantial
programs. They're saying, 'We can still do everything we were planning
to do, but now we can do it with fewer people.' And I'm not certain
that's a workable plan."
Intel has been under intense pressure to unload money-losing divisions
and halt the encroachment of AMD on its lucrative core business making
the microprocessors that act as the brains of computers.
Intel has been steadily losing profits and market share. Analysts
have criticized it for reacting too slowly after AMD's 2003 launch
of the critically acclaimed Opteron and Athlon 64 chips for servers
and desktop PCs.
Speculation about massive job cuts has been rampant since Otellini
announced in April the company was planning a broad overhaul targeting
money-losing business groups in every aspect of its operations.
Intel, which had about 103,000 employees worldwide at the time,
vowed to cut $1 billion (euro780 million) in spending. It also launched
the review of its business units.
The latest cuts come after three months of streamlining.
In June, the company said it planned to shed 1,400 jobs by selling
a money-losing division that makes chips for cell phones and other
handheld devices to Marvell Technology Group Ltd., which said it
would absorb most of the workers in the $600 million (euro468 million)
deal.
The next month, Intel slashed 1,000 management jobs to reduce layers
between top executives and supervisors. Five top executives were
also reassigned to new positions, which the company said would simplify
management and reduce the number of senior managers reporting to
Otellini by two.
And earlier this month, Intel said it was selling its media and
signaling business, which makes telecommunications motherboards and
software. About 600 employees were expected to be acquired by the
buyer, Eicon Networks Corp., which bought the business for an undisclosed
sum.
Otellini said the current restructuring will be as expansive as
the company's transformation in the mid-1980s, when it exited a business
it helped create -- making dynamic random access memory chips widely
used to store information in computers -- to focus on microprocessors.
That shift prompted one of Intel's largest rounds of layoffs ever,
with the company eliminating more than 7,000 jobs, about 30 percent
of its work force at the time.
Since then, Intel has avoided large-scale layoffs. But the dot-com
crash did prompt the elimination of about 11,000 jobs -- largely
through attrition and buyouts -- in less than two years.
Eric Ross, analyst with ThinkEquity Partners, said the estimated
$3 billion (euro2.34 billion) savings from the cuts was higher than
expected, and could help the company reverse its fortunes.
"They're going to lose a lot of share, the PC environment is
tough, and they're bloated," he said. "But if they can
cut costs enough, we're going to see a different company."
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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