Well Done, Dr Schumacher (Mannerisms)

Well Done, Dr Schumacher

It's always heartening to see good men prevail, and the complete exoneration of former Infineon CEO Ulrich Schumacher on charges of bribery, breach of trust and fraud is an excellent result of the recent Munich court case.

It seems that the result of the case is that no appeal will be possible from this judgment, and that Schumacher has been totally absolved of wrongdoing in a case that should never have been brought.

The fact that it was brought at all says much about the forces at work in the upper ranks of Infineon and Siemens.

Infineon was, and is, a great engineering company. For that to be possible means there are many dedicated and smart people at work in the company.

Unfortunately, those qualities do not seem to extend to Infineon's top management which has provoked unseemly public rows with two former CEOs, Schumacher and Wolfgang Ziebart, and which has pursued dangerous flirtations with the private equity industry, in full knowledge of how disastrous has been the PE industry's ownership NXP and Freescale.

The engineers of Infineon must be baffled by the motivation of their top management. They are not the only ones.

Just what are they trying to achieve?

Posted by David Manners on November 6, 2009 1:00 AM | Permalink|

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Comments (2)

Anonymous:

David, I could not agree more, Ulli and Ziebart were both fine (but very different) managers. Infineon could have prospered under both were it not for the board interference and bad management.

What a completely despicable lot the board turned out to be. To put wholy decent people through such trauna with 'evidence' that was shown to be little more than a pack of disjointed, pre-fabricated lies that even a 6-year could have done a better job at, never mind the damage it was doing to the company they were supposed to be looking after, is a complete failure of duty and immoral. Yet the culprits are still in power with no shame or punishment ... and the poor engineers and staff at Infineon even more badly let down. Even sadder to is it will no-doubt be fat cheques and pay-offs when these guilty folks 'resign/retire'.

These people very publicly failed by any moral and professional measure. Their evidence was crudely false or non-existent and the company they run has been severely derailed and damaged. It will take at least 10 years to turn Infineon around, if at all.

If these guilty parties are now let off and worse still allowed to profit from their failures it will be yet another victory for the dark and detestable side of capitalism and a very sad day for the chip industry. So what's it to be then ... kick them all out, including those guilty by association or for passively standing by not blowing the whistle (well I'm not holding my breath) or (more likely) promotions and pay-offs all round then?

Posted by Anonymous | November 6, 2009 6:57 AM

Posted on November 6, 2009 06:57

quak:

Please do not forget Qimonda (apart of ex-Ben-Q), the sole ex-company of Siemens, that up to now suffered the effect of these top manager decision

Posted by quak | November 6, 2009 7:26 AM

Posted on November 6, 2009 07:26

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on November 6, 2009 1:00 AM.

The previous post in this blog was Fable: A Flaw's A Flaw.

The next post in this blog is Europe 'Fit Until The Next Millennium', Says Jurgen Knorr.

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Mannerisms

Ruminations on the semiconductor industry from David Manners