Ruiz Out in Insider Trading Scandal

He has not been charged and wasn’t even identified in the government’s indictments

Nov. 2, 2009 03:45 PM

Former AMD CEO Hector Ruiz, the guy who spun out AMD's plants into a joint venture with the government of Abu Dhabi and then became chairman of that company when it was formed in March, has stepped down after being identified as one of the tipsters leaking material inside information to hedge funds that traded on it.

The scandal has also cost Robert Moffat, the head of IBM servers and chips and a supposed heir presumptive to IBM CEO Sam Palmisano, his job.

Moffat was arrested October 16 on charges of conspiracy to commit securities fraud on the basis of government wire taps and IBM severed its ties with him last Friday.

Ruiz, on the other hand, has not been charged and wasn't even identified in the government's indictments.

The board of GlobalFoundaries, the AMD joint venture, said this morning that Ruiz is immediately taking a voluntary leave of absence and will resign from the company in January. It said he submitted his resignation in September with an effective date of January 4.

The company's statement made no mention of his role in the government's case.

Apparently Ruiz anticipated being publicly outed as the unnamed "AMD executive" talked about in court documents as allegedly divulging the secret details of the AMD spinout to Danielle Chiesi, a portfolio manager at New Castle Funds and confidant of Moffat too. The Wall Street Journal made the connection last week.

The government says that Chiesi and Raj Rajaratnam, head of the Galleon Group, bought shares in AMD based on Ruiz' tips. They also got inside information on AMD from Moffat, who was acquainted with the details of the GlobalFoundaries deal because IBM had to license its chip technology to the venture.

Moffat, however, also allegedly told Chiesi all about the financial results of IBM and Sun ahead of either company reporting their quarters. Moffat got Sun's numbers from IBM's due diligence when Big Blue was thinking of acquiring Sun.

Ruiz will be replaced on an interim basis by former Broadcom CEO and GlobalFoundries board member Lanny Ross.

About Maureen O'Gara
Maureen O'Gara the most read technology reporter for the past 20 years, is the Cloud Computing and Virtualization News Desk editor of SYS-CON Media. She is the publisher of famous "Billygrams" and the editor-in-chief of "Client/Server News" for more than a decade. One of the most respected technology reporters in the business, Maureen can be reached by email at maureen(at)sys-con.com or paperboy(at)g2news.com, and by phone at 516 759-7025.