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AMD reshuffles executives

by Scott Bicheno on 24 October 2008, 10:38

Tags: AMD (NYSE:AMD)

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Musical chairs

AMD has announced the promotion of Emilio Ghilardi, currently the senior VP and GM of sales for Europe, to the role of chief sales officer. Additionally it has promoted Bob Rivet, currently chief financial officer, to chief operations and administrative officer.

Ghilardi only arrived at AMD this June, having been apparently appointed to replace former EMEA top dog Alberto Macchi. The fact that he's already moving onwards and upwards makes this look like a pre-planned manoeuvre, something AMD pretty much confirmed in the announcement when it said: "Ghilardi will assume his new position as part of a planned executive transition."

Current top sales exec - Gustavo Arenas - appears to have been demoted. "AMD's current Senior Vice President and Chief Sales Officer Gustavo Arenas will transition into a role focused exclusively on further strengthening AMD's global customer and strategic relationships, one of his stated objectives when he assumed the CSO role earlier this year," said the announcement.

What this does leave is a vacuum at the top in Europe. A natural successor to Ghilardi would be Giuseppe Amato, who worked under Macchi before he left and is currently director of the Value Proposition Group, whatever that means, and is often the senior EMEA marketing representative for AMD.

Another senior EMEA marketing exec is Jochen Polster, who is officially the EMEA marketing director, although his LinkedIn page begs to differ. If either of these two gets the nod it may be indicative of where the EMEA power base of AMD currently resides.

On the other hand AMD may well get someone in from the outside, after all they did last time. We wonder what the odds are of another HP lifer suddenly materialising in the role, who was close to Ghilardi when he was at HP.