AMD Ex-CEO Fingered as Galleon Source

(MoneyWatch)  When discussing the growing insider trading scandals and expanding connection to high tech companies with an expert in corporate governance recently, he noted that it seemed to be people lower down in organizations looking for someone to grease their palms, and not members of upper management. That was questionable even a week ago, as some ranking (though not top) people at IBM and Intel, at least, were implicated. But now the Wall Street Journal reports that Advanced Micro Devices's former CEO Hector Ruiz gave confidential information about the company to one of the Galleon insider trading defendants, and at the time, Ruiz was still AMD chairman. And so the tech sector leaps neck deep into mud rather than dealing with a few splashes here and there.

A complaint filed in a New York federal court this month alleged that the AMD executive now identified as Mr. Ruiz shared confidential information with Ms. [Danielle Chiesi] about a 2008 reorganization of AMD. The deal spun off AMD's manufacturing operations to a joint venture bankrolled by investors from Abu Dhabi. Mr. Ruiz became chairman of the new company, Globalfoundries Inc., and continues in that role.

Oh, jeez, what an unmitigated mess. This will do no good for the industry, because now we have the picture of people literally at the very top of their organizations willing to sell out. If the chairman of AMD could do this, why not the head of another company? So far, IBM, Intel, Google, Sun Microsystems, and Akamai Technologies are all implicated to some degree or other. What other criminal complaints will get filed? And who else will be named? At this point, saying that anyone is above suspicion seems fondly naive.

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