( ESNUG 553 Item 5 ) -------------------------------------------- [11/12/15]
Subject: 579 engineers on Wally Rhines receiving the Kaufman Award tomorrow
Tomorrow night, Wally Rhines, the 22 year reigning CEO of Mentor Graphics,
is going be given EDAC's highest honor, the Kaufman Award -- named after
Phil Kaufman -- the chairman of a very early (1981) EDA company called
Silicon Compilers Inc. who died of a heart attack during a 1992 business
trip to Japan.
Why is Wally getting this? The usual cynics will say "it's because Mentor
is one of the EDA Big 3; their PR people lobbied for and got this because
it's now MENT's turn" or some conspiracy theorists would take it further
with "they paid off the key award people to have Wally win this year."
While this may have a grain of truth with some of the other Kaufman Award
winners (because politics are in every human endeavor), with Wally it's
complete bunk.
Wally earned this award. He earned it by remaining an engineer's engineer
for his entire 44 year professional career -- and especially with how he
ran MENT for the past 22 years.
How do I know this?
There were two times when Wally was directly threatened with being removed
from MENT as CEO. The first time was in 2008 when Mike Fister, then the
CEO of Cadence, openly talked about doing a hostile takeover of MENT.
The two best summaries of what Mike Fister was doing at that time was:
It seems pretty clear that Mike Fister's ploy all along was to get
Cadence R&D trimmed down, get CDNS expenses in control and set CDNS
up nicely for some VC consortium to take it private. But after the
Blackrock deal fell through Fister has been vague in terms of CDNS's
long term direction. There is no new product/technology in the CDNS
pipeline (The X Initiave and Catena have been buried). So now this
move to take over MENT is more like a desperate gambit to for CDNS
to take on Synopsys.
And
Mike Fister is a sleazy guy. First he blows out what ever little value
Cadence had left by making rock bottom all you can eat deals lasting to
eternity with NXP and Freescale to get his bonus, then he needs to
replenish the technology pipeline since the revenue well will otherwise
fall dry. Doing so with an acquisition will surely give him another big
payoff and a great way to exit the industry gracefully. Fister should
be featured on Jim Cramer's CEO wall of shame but I guess the industry
is too small for that.
But what spoke volumes at the time were the 272 Mentor customers who spoke
up for a Wally Rhines MENT and NOT a Mike Fister CDNS-MENT in survey:
( ESNUG 474 Subjects ) ------------------------------------ [07/02/2008]
Item 1: 81% of EDA users disapprove of Cadence-Mentor merger (Pt I)
Item 2: 81% of EDA users disapprove of Cadence-Mentor merger (Pt II)
Item 3: 81% of EDA users disapprove of Cadence-Mentor merger (Pt III)
Item 4: Mentor employees
Item 5: Cadence employees
Item 6: recent ex-Cadence employees
Item 7: non-Mentor and non-Cadence EDA employees
Item 8: EDA watchers and the university folks
The best single comment that came out of that 2008 EDA user survey was:
"A Cadence controlled Mentor would be a bad thing unless the board
replaces Fister with Wally.
Mentor has shown a willingness to work with competitors to create open
industry standards. Except for the Verilog language so many years ago,
Cadence seems to always prefer the business strategy of trying to lock
users into a Cadence flow to prevent interoperability.
- [ An Anon Engineer ] http://deepchip.com/items/0474-01.html
DID YOU GET THAT?: Mike Fister attacks a Wally Rhines' Mentor and the chip
design world -- even Fister's own customers and his employees -- all very
vocally came out to pro-Wally instead. (Talk about plans backfiring!)
FUN FOLLOW-UP: Just 5 weeks later Mike Fister himself was kicked out of
Cadence by his own board of directors.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
The second time Wally was threatened with being removed as CEO of MENT was
three years later in 2011.
This time it was personal. Carl Icahn directly attacked Wally's leadership
as he bought 15.7% of MENT shares in an attempted hostile takeover of the
company. Another investor, Don Drapkin, joined buying 5.5% of MENT.
"...the company should be acquired, or at the very least it should
be put up for sale and see what the shareholders want to do with it."
- Carl Icahn on CNBC on (02/08/11)
"Management's done nothing to promote shareholder value. It's just
a sleepy company run like a country club."
- Donald Drapkin of Casablanca Capital in WSJ (02/08/11)
Owning that many MENT shares, Icahn got three of his own hand-picked guys to
be on the MENT board.
When I did my user survey, this time 307 engineers spoke up for Wally!
( ESNUG 489 Subjects ) -------------------------------- [03/11/2011]
Item 1: 78% of MENT users rate Wally's MENT "Generally Positive"
Item 2: 88% of MENT users greatly fear a Synopsys-Cadence duopoly
Item 3: 59% of MENT rivals rate Wally's MENT "Generally Positive"
Item 4: 51% of MENT rivals want Wally's MENT to be left alone
Item 5: MENT employees rate Wally's MENT "Generally Positive"
Item 6: MENT employees want Wally's MENT to be left alone
Item 7: Those not EDA users, not MENT rivals, not MENT employees
Item 8: FAQ for this DeepChip EDA user opinion survey
Here's the statistical breakout of what the users thought of Wally:
In a CNBC interview on Tuesday, Carl Icahn said that Mentor Graphics
"should be acquired, or at the very least, be put up for sale." The
NY Times reports that Icahn owns 14.7% of the company and he plans
to nominate at least 3 new directors to the Mentor board next week.
I feel Mentor's present management and how Mentor is currently
run as an EDA company is (CHOOSE ONE):
A. Generally positive.
: ####################################### 78%
B. Generally neutral.
: ######### 17%
C. Generally negative.
: ## 4%
Comments? What's your reasoning for your choice?
And here were the user comments that called out Wally directly by name:
(A) generally positive
Wally actually has an engineering background and knows what he's talking
about -- he's not just a finance guy put in place by Wall Street.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
A. Generally positive.
Wally focuses on making real improvements to the capabilities of their
design tools. Other EDA companies (especially Cadence) focus on making
their tools look good, which is not the same thing as being good.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
A. Generally positive.
I think Wally does a pretty good job. Mentor is one of the companies that
realized very early that EDA has to be extended to the systems area.
Acquisitions are handled in a decent way (e.g. Modelsim). I have had a
very friendly connection to Mentor Sales staff, they were always very
helpful and always put customer satisfaction before $$$.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
A. Generally positive.
Wally Rhines has a lot of good ideas for Mentor's future.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
A. Generally positive.
I used to work at Mentor. Wally and Greg create an environment that
allows for good point solutions to be developed.
- Rick Tomihiro of Xilinx
A. Generally positive
Mentor has selected key product areas to pursue where they are able to
field best-of-class solutions. With reduced competition in these spaces,
Mentor is able to fund continued innovation and evolution.
In addition, I believe that Wally Rhines is one of the most visionary
CEOs in EDA and I would hate to see him leave.
- [ An Anon EDA Vendor ]
A. Generally positive.
Wally generally gets good reviews in the EDA community. Mentor could do
a lot worse (confused readers should Google: "FISTER CADENCE FAILURE").
Wally certainly is a nicer guy that Art, but maybe that is the problem.
I am always amazed at Wally's ability to find some bizarre curve fitting
algorithm to bolster the claim that Moore's Law is heathy when it isn't.
- [ An Anon EDA Vendor ]
A. Generally positive.
Wally Rhines and his team are very ethical, and up-front. Good product
for fair value. Are there improvements possible, yes, but that is true
everywhere. They do NOT carelessly spend money.
- [ An Anon EDA Watcher ]
Since Carl Icahn was also advocating breaking up MENT and selling the parts
to Synopsys and Cadence, I asked this additional survey question:
In my opinion, the EDA industry and the EDA user community will
be better off overall if (CHOOSE ONE):
A. Mentor is acquired, presumably by Synopsys or Cadence.
: ############# 26% - acquired by SNPS or CDNS
: # 2% - acquired by Magma
B. Mentor sells off or closes its less profitable product lines.
: ########### 21%
C. Mentor is left alone to run as it has before.
: ########################## 51%
Comments? What's your reasoning for your choice?
The majority (72%) wanted MENT remaining either "as-is" under Wally (51%) or
for Wally to stay but for him to sell off the less profitable lines (21%).
And, again, here's the survey comments which mentioned Wally by name:
C. Let the free-market dynamics drive Mentor's fate. Icahn, Soros, et al.
should not dictate Mentor's business strategy for their own selfish
profit. If they don't like the way Wally is running the business, they
should invest into other companies they feel are on the right track.
- [ An Anon EDA Vendor ]
C. Leave 'em alone
Their history shows a consistent track record of progressively building a
business by carrying customers with them despite the uber-bullshit world
of EDA today. Their employee retention is good and morale has always
appeared positive. I would also wager that MENT would top polls for
customer satisfaction given their attitudes. All these are signs of a
Wally and Greg doing good management by running a well oiled and
maintained machine that has a lot of life in it yet.
- [ An Anon EDA Vendor ]
A. I think Mentor should be sold to Cadence.
Comparing the CEO and executive team at Cadence vs. Mentor, Mentor's is
far superior in term of experience, track-record, stability, and so-on.
I can see Wally and Greg running the combined MENT-CDNS company over
Lip-bu (he would go back to being a VC), so management wins.
Finally, as we would expect, cuts will follow after a merger. It should
be heavier on the Cadence side, so the Mentor employees win.
- [ An Anon EDA Vendor ]
DID YOU GET THAT? (part II): Two Wall St. bigwigs buy up 21% of MENT shares
in a second attempt to get Wally ousted as CEO -- and customers again rally
for Wally -- as do the other MENT shareholders! (Backfire, part II)
FUN FOLLOW-UP (part II): Those $13.48 MENT shares Icahn and Drapkin bought
on 02/08/11 are now worth $27.80 -- a 106% gain -- that they got by keeping
Wally as MENT's CEO. (I wonder if they ever thanked Wally for this...)
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
So back to the original question of how do I know that this completely nerdy
1968 graduating ROTC cadet Walden Rhines...
or this 1972 Stanford hippie EE grad student Wally Rhines...
or this 1977 Texas Instruments researcher Wally Rhines...
or this 1985 newbie Texas Instruments executive Wally Rhines...
actually earned the Kaufman Award that he's getting tomorrow night? It's
because when the going got ugly, 272 + 307 == 579 of Wally's engineering
peers (and even many of his rivals) stepped up and said so.
Do you have any idea how rare that is?
When was the last time you ever saw hundreds of high tech customers and high
tech employees ever step up for ANY high tech CEO who was being threatened
with removal???
Twice??!!
- John Cooley
DeepChip.com Holliston, MA
P.S. I'll be the tall fat out-of-place guy wearing an orange polo shirt
at the Kaufman dinner tomorrow night. Orange is for a mutual good
friend who would have also loved to watch Wally get this award.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Related Articles
Wally Rhines on selling your ideas if you have no supporting data
Mentor CEO Wally Rhines Gloats On Calibre / Denies Renoir Rumors
letter Mike Fister sent to Wally Rhines on hostile bid on Mentor
MENT board whacks 2 out of Icahn's 3 cronies in clever maneuver
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