Chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices Inc late on Tuesday said it was “thoroughly reviewing” published reports fingering former chairman and CEO Hector Ruiz as the AMD executive who gave confidential company information to a defendant in the Galleon Group insider trading case.
“We are not aware of any allegation of criminal misconduct on the part of any current or former AMD employees, nor have any current or former AMD employees been charged with a crime,” AMD said in a statement.
A spokesman for the Sunnyvale, California-based company declined to comment further.
US ATTORNEY’S OFFICE
Citing an unnamed person familiar with the matter, the Wall Street Journal reported on its Web site on Tuesday that Ruiz is the AMD executive described in the Manhattan US Attorney’s Office complaint as passing inside information to defendant Danielle Chiesi.
Chiesi, 43, was among six hedge fund managers and corporate executives arrested earlier this month in a hedge fund insider trading case that authorities say generated more than US$25 million in illegal profits.
Chiesi worked for New Castle, the equity hedge fund group of Bear Stearns Asset Management Inc that had assets worth about US$1 billion under management, court papers showed.
Raj Rajaratnam, the Galleon Group portfolio manager at the center of the case, last week said Galleon would wind down its funds after publicity surrounding the case led some investors to pull out money.
Before he left AMD’s CEO job last year, Ruiz was only the second person to run the company other than founder and longtime CEO Jerry Sanders and was one of the few Hispanic CEOs of a major US corporation. Ruiz, now 63, left amid mounting investor frustration over AMD’s finances.
GLOBALFOUNDRIES
He was instrumental in orchestrating a fix: the spinoff of AMD’s manufacturing operations into a company called GlobalFoundries Inc, of which he is now chairman.
A GlobalFoundries spokesman on Tuesday would say only that the allegations predate the company’s launch.
AMD, which had US$5.8 billion in revenue last year, is small compared to its rival Intel Corp, which owns about 80 percent of the world’s microprocessor market.
Before word of Ruiz’s possible involvement surfaced, the highest-ranking corporate executive ensnared in the insider-trading scheme was an IBM Corp senior vice president, Robert Moffat, who was once considered a possible candidate for CEO. Moffat was put on leave after the allegations surfaced and no longer serves as an officer of the company.
Moffat is accused of leaking secrets about IBM’s earnings and financial dealings with partners, including AMD. That information allegedly included AMD’s plans for GlobalFoundries.
IBM was involved in those talks because it has a technology development partnership with AMD.
The indictment against Moffat and the person he’s accused of supplying information to, Chiesi, says that an AMD executive also provided inside information to Chiesi, but that executive is not named.
The government is aiming to recruit 1,096 foreign English teachers and teaching assistants this year, the Ministry of Education said yesterday. The foreign teachers would work closely with elementary and junior-high instructors to create and teach courses, ministry official Tsai Yi-ching (蔡宜靜) said. Together, they would create an immersive language environment, helping to motivate students while enhancing the skills of local teachers, she said. The ministry has since 2021 been recruiting foreign teachers through the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which offers placement, salary, housing and other benefits to eligible foreign teachers. Two centers serving northern and southern Taiwan assist in recruiting and training
WIDE NET: Health officials said they are considering all possibilities, such as bongkrekic acid, while the city mayor said they have not ruled out the possibility of a malicious act of poisoning Two people who dined at a restaurant in Taipei’s Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 last week have died, while four are in intensive care, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. All of the outlets of Malaysian vegetarian restaurant franchise Polam Kopitiam have been ordered to close pending an investigation after 11 people became ill due to suspected food poisoning, city officials told a news conference in Taipei. The first fatality, a 39-year-old man who ate at the restaurant on Friday last week, died of kidney failure two days later at the city’s Mackay Memorial Hospital. A 66-year-old man who dined
RESTAURANT POISONING? Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Victor Wang at a press conference last night said this was the first time bongkrekic acid was detected in Taiwan An autopsy discovered bongkrekic acid in a specimen collected from a person who died from food poisoning after dining at the Malaysian restaurant chain Polam Kopitiam, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said at a news conference last night. It was the first time bongkrekic acid was detected in Taiwan, Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Victor Wang (王必勝) said. The testing conducted by forensic specialists at National Taiwan University was facilitated after a hospital voluntarily offered standard samples it had in stock that are required to test for bongkrekic acid, he said. Wang told the news conference that testing would continue despite
‘CARRIER KILLERS’: The Tuo Chiang-class corvettes’ stealth capability means they have a radar cross-section as small as the size of a fishing boat, an analyst said President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday presided over a ceremony at Yilan County’s Suao Harbor (蘇澳港), where the navy took delivery of two indigenous Tuo Chiang-class corvettes. The corvettes, An Chiang (安江) and Wan Chiang (萬江), along with the introduction of the coast guard’s third and fourth 4,000-tonne cutters earlier this month, are a testament to Taiwan’s shipbuilding capability and signify the nation’s resolve to defend democracy and freedom, Tsai said. The vessels are also the last two of six Tuo Chiang-class corvettes ordered from Lungteh Shipbuilding Co (龍德造船) by the navy, Tsai said. The first Tuo Chiang-class vessel delivered was Ta Chiang (塔江)