US chipmaker Intel appoints Robert Swan as chief executive

Intel appointed Robert “Bob” Swan as its chief executive on Thursday about seven months after he stepped in to lead the company on an interim basis following Brian Krzanich’s resignation in June. 

Mr Swan, 58, had previously served as Intel’s chief financial officer since 2016. He will be the company’s seventh chief executive in its 50-year history, having previously worked at eBay. 

Mr Krzanich exited the company after the chipmaker was informed of a past consensual relationship with an Intel employee. Intel at the time considered both internal and external candidates to replace him. Hiring an external candidate would have broken with the company’s longstanding practice of promoting internal executives.

Intel shares fell 2 per cent on the news on Thursday.

“As Intel continues to transform its business to capture more of a large and expanding opportunity that includes the data centre, artificial intelligence and autonomous driving, while continuing to get value from the PC business, the board concluded after a thorough search that Bob is the right leader to drive Intel into its next era of growth,” said chairman Andy Bryant. 

In a letter to employees posted to Intel’s website, Mr Swan said the company’s strategy of focusing on data, rather than its historic focus on PCs, “is not changing”. However, he added: “Our execution must improve . . . we need to continue to evolve.”

The appointment comes after Intel last week warned that headwinds it experienced in the final three months of last year will continue in 2019, and said its data centre chips business was hurt by a slowdown in China and pause in capital spending by cloud computing companies. 

Vijay Rakesh, analyst at Mizuho Tech, said that investors’ reaction “seems to be muted to negative” given “the lack of a technologist leading a premier global technology company”. 

Unlike his six predecessors, who had all been engineers and semiconductor specialists, Mr Swan has spent most of his career in finance departments, including stints as chief financial officer at General Electric, Electronic Data Systems and, until 2015, eBay. Before joining Intel, he was an operating partner at General Atlantic in Palo Alto, advising the equity group’s portfolio companies on finance and M&A. 

While his time at Intel has included elements of corporate strategy, Mr Swan’s only previous tenure as a chief executive was at Webvan in 2001. The food delivery pioneer became a high-profile victim of the dotcom bust and, after burning through hundreds of millions of dollars, ultimately filed for bankruptcy.

Mr Swan will receive a base salary of $1.25m and a new performance-based stock incentive scheme worth up to $13m over three years, the company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He will also be eligible for an annual performance bonus with a target pay out of about $3.4m and further annual equity grants worth up to $15.5m. 

Intel on Thursday also said Todd Underwood will assume the role of interim finance chief as the company undertakes a review of internal and external candidates. He currently serves as vice-president of finance and director of corporate planning and reporting.