Milpitas, CA—SanDisk Corp. announced that after 22 years of service, Dr. Eli Harari, founder, chairman and chief executive officer, will retire from his current positions on December 31, 2010. Dr. Harari, 65, will provide advisory services, particularly technology related, to the company for a period of two years starting January 1, 2011.
As part of the succession planning process, SanDisk’s board of directors announced it has appointed Sanjay Mehrotra, 52, currently SanDisk’s president and chief operating officer, to be the president and CEO, effective January 1, 2011 and has appointed him to the company’s board effective July 21, 2010.
Also announced is that Michael Marks, a member of the SanDisk board since 2003, will assume the role of chairman effective January 1, 2011. Marks is president of Riverwood Capital, a private equity firm, and formerly was CEO of Flextronics for twelve years.
“Over the past 22 years, SanDisk has grown to become a leading provider of flash memory-based storage solutions with total annual revenues approaching $5 billion,” said Dr. Eli Harari. “I have been fortunate to lead this great company and its people all these years. The company’s management is broad and deep, and I am very pleased to hand over my responsibilities to Sanjay Mehrotra, my cofounder and business partner, at the end of this year. Our business and technology leadership have never been stronger and I’m confident the company will scale new heights under Sanjay’s leadership.”
Irwin Federman, lead independent director, SanDisk, said, “Eli is a true visionary, and he has been instrumental in the creation of the flash memory industry through both his technology leadership and through his seeding and development of multiple large end markets. Eli has demonstrated remarkable versatility in his ability to grow from entrepreneur to a highly regarded CEO of a multibillion-dollar global corporation. As an immigrant to America, he is a true American success story. On behalf of the employees of SanDisk and the board of directors, it is my privilege to have served along with Eli and I thank him for all his hard work in creating a well respected and dynamic technology company.
“Sanjay is a strong and dynamic leader. He has worked very closely with Eli since SanDisk’s inception, and there is no person better qualified to take the baton and lead SanDisk through the next phase of its evolution,” Federman added. sandisk.com
