NXP Nominate Next CEO
Article By : Junko Yoshida
Kurt Sievers will succeed Richard Clemmer as president and CEO. Sievers spent much of his career establishing NXP as a leader in the automotive semiconductor market.
PARIS — NXP Semiconductors has revealed that Kurt Sievers will succeed Richard Clemmer as president and CEO. Sievers has been NXP’s president since September of 2018.
This succession plan has been in place at NXP for several years, with most industry observers anticipating Sievers as Clemmer’s heir apparent.
Clemmers, NXP’s CEO since 2009, pulled off the nearly $12 billion deal to acquire Freescale, which resulted in doubling NXP’s auto-related revenue to 40 percent. Clemmer was also at the reins when Qualcomm walked away from a $44 billion deal to buy NXP in the summer of 2018.
Beyond those two big deals — one successful, one canceled — Clemmer is best known for instituting a disciplined management approach that narrowed previously broad-based product/technology segments at NXP into a handful of highly differentiated businesses in which the company could lead the market.
In a statement, Peter Bonfield, NXP Chairman of the Board, said: “Kurt is unique in his ability to translate vision and strategy into world-class execution, bringing together teams to drive results. He has the demonstrated ability to focus, motivate and lead a globally diverse organization, and embodies NXP’s ethos of a ‘Customer Focused Passion to Win’.”
Sievers, who has been a member of the executive management team since 2009, played a pivotal role in defining the NXP’s High-Performance Mixed Signal Strategy. He also spent much of his career establishing NXP as a leader in the automotive semiconductor market. NXP also described Sievers as “influential” in the merger of NXP and Freescale Semiconductors.
Noting NXP’s growing footprint in the IoT and Automotive segments, Sievers said in a statement, “We leverage our focus on safe and secure edge computing along with connectivity and efficient power management. We have made great strides in our execution and I will stay true to this successful and winning strategy.”
Earlier this year during an interview with EE Times at CES, Lars Reger, NXP’s CTO, recalled, “I was fortunate to have Sievers as my boss when I was working in the automotive segment.” Whenever the conversation turned to unconventional technology ideas — CMOS radars, for example — Sievers tested, provoked and challenged his colleague to prove him wrong.
NXP’s board of directors will propose the appointment of Sievers as CEO at the company’s annual general meeting of shareholders scheduled for May 27, 2020.