AMD's Chief of Sales Executive Leaves the Company

Advanced Micro Devices, better known as AMD, announced that Henri Richard, the company's chief sales officer, is going to leave the company soon, at the beginning of September, just before the launch of the much awaited Barcelona quad core processors.

According to a press release the company posted on its Web site after the announcement of Henri Richard's resignation, the former chief of sales and vice president will depart from AMD on his own accord and under "completely amicable terms". The AMD chief executive officer and president Hector Ruiz said that the former vice president always delivered on his goals that were centered around the company's sales and marketing position. Henri Richard leaves AMD after a very hard year for the company as the processor manufacturer encountered problems with its graphics division, the formally independent company ATI and on top of that, the new flagship of its line of processors had to be postponed by more than six months because of design problems.

Apart from these problems, AMD faced its rival, the biggest chip manufacturer and vendor in the whole world, Intel, in a battle that it could not possibly win as it competed with outclassed processors against quad core designs that were almost a full year ahead of what AMD could deliver. The price war between AMD and Intel led to the smaller company dropping prices until a very low level was reached. The former chief of sales and marketing was a very public figure at AMD, being more visible than the company's president. According to the news site News.com, in an internal AMD memo, the company's president Hector Ruiz is announcing the chief of sales departure while thanking him for his services. "When Henri joined AMD in 2002, his primary mission was to establish a world-class global Sales and Marketing organization. It is safe to say that he has accomplished that mission, and he is now ready for a new challenge in his career," Ruiz wrote.

It looks like AMD is losing some pretty important executives as only last month the former head of ATI, Dave Orton, presented his resignation after he stayed for almost a full year in order to help the two companies merge. AMD did not confirm nor deny whether Henri Richard will be presented at the launch of the much awaited Barcelona line of processors that is according to the manufacturing company "the most anticipated premiere of 2007". Original plans required him to take part in the official launch of the Barcelona CPUs in Europe but now it is uncertain if he will continue with those plans or not.