Aixtron CEO packs it in
LED expert and ex Osram board member Martin Goetzeler will take over from Paul Hyland on March 1st, 2013
Aixtron is having a bit of a rough time.
Less than a month ago, Holger Juergensen (deputy chairman of the supervisory board) and Karl-Hermann Kuklies (ordinary member of the supervisory board) of Aixtron, both resigned.
The firm has also recently had a round of redundancies.
Now, Aixtron SE has announced that Paul Hyland, President and CEO, will leave the company by mutual agreement with effect as of February 28th, 2013, for personal reasons.
The Supervisory Board has appointed Martin Goetzeler (50), an internationally experienced top manager and industry expert, as Hyland's successor. Goetzeler will join the company on March 1st, 2013.
Within the Executive Board, he will be responsible for the areas strategy, production, purchasing and logistics, investor relations and group communication.
Before his appointment, Goetzeler served on the executive board of Siemens' subsidiary Osram and also held various international leadership positions within the Siemens group. He is an acknowledged expert in the LED and lighting industry.
For many years, Martin Goetzeler served as President of the European Technology Platform Photonics21, which, among other things, advises the European Commission in determining major strategic research in the area of photonics.
His extensive experience in the target markets of Aixtron will further strengthen Aixtron"˜s technology leading position in a period of considerable market change. He says, "I am looking forward to the task of leading Aixtron as a leading provider of semiconductor technology production solutions along the way towards industrial mass production."
"We have the opportunity to address some of the current social megatrends such as energy efficiency and intelligent networking, which are dominated by LEDs, OLEDs and power electronics. There is substantial growth potential for Aixtron in all of these areas," continues Goetzeler.
Hyland comments, "I am very pleased that I had the opportunity to participate in Aixtron's route to becoming a globally acknowledged leading technology company. I am pleased to be able to hand over the CEO role to Mr. Goetzeler at this time. Mr. Goetzeler can build on a solid foundation, and he has both the leadership qualities and experience to take Aixtron successfully onto the next level."
Kim Schindelhauer, the chairman of the Supervisory Board of Aixtron SE, expressed his gratitude to Hyland for his contributions to the company and says, "Mr. Hyland has successfully managed the Company during his tenure through many ups and downs in the semiconductor industry. For this, we would like to express our great appreciation. We are delighted to have found someone like Mr. Goetzeler, a versatile manager with extensive knowledge in the high-tech market and international experience. Mr. Hyland will actively support Mr. Goetzeler in taking up his office and ensure a smooth transition."
Aixtron provides a number of tools used in the silicon industry. These include systems used in the manufacturing of metal and oxide films for CMOS gate stacks used in logic and memory ICs. The firm also specialises in metal and oxide films for capacitor structures used in DRAM and Ferro-Electric Random Access Memory (FeRAM) memory ICs and SiGe and strained silicon epitaxial layers for high-performance CMOS logic ICs.
