Cree's LED head departs the company in latest management shakeup
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Cree headquarters, Durham, N.C.
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Cree headquarters, Durham, N.C.
By Lauren K. Ohnesorge – Senior Staff Writer, Triangle Business Journal
a day ago
Another management shuffle at Cree – and this time it’s the Durham semiconductor firm’s LED products division.
David Emerson, longtime executive vice president and general manager of the unit, “stepped down” effective Dec. 10, the company said in a securities filing Friday. In his stead, four-year Cree veteran Claude Demby has been appointed senior vice president and general manager of LED products. Demby was formerly senior vice president of strategy and corporate development. Prior to Cree, he was CEO of Noel Group.
Cree has gone through multiple leadership changes since CEO Gregg Lowe arrived at the company last year.
Top lighting executives – including Daniel Castillo, then-president of the lighting division – left in 2017. As did Frank Plastina, once head of the firm’s Wolfspeed subsidiary. Earlier this year, the company announced a new CFO in Neill Reynolds, replacing longtime CFO Mike McDevitt. And in October, the company named Darren Jackson as its new board chairman.
But the biggest change has been the strategy shift. Cree, whose previous CEO had envisioned it as a lighting-focused company, is putting more of a priority on Wolfspeed, its power and radio frequency device subsidiary. Lowe has said that Wolfspeed, the smallest of the firm’s three units, would soon surpass lighting and LED products in revenue.
Emerson moved into the role of vice president and general manager of LEDs back in 2013 under then-CEO Chuck Swoboda.
A Cree representative did not immediately return a request for more information on Emerson's departure.
Cree closed Friday at $43.52, down 3 percent. |
