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SAN JOSE, Oct. 20Cadence Design Systems announced revenue for its third quarter was $302 million, up from $269 million last year.

On a GAAP basis, Cadence realized net income of $20 million, compared to a net loss of $14 million, last year.

Non-GAAP earnings were $52 million, versus $34 million last year.

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LONDON, Oct. 7 -- Cookson Group plc today promoted Steve Corbett to chief executive of its Electronics division, replacing Ray Sharpe, who left the company last summer. The company also announced a shakeup in its laminates division.

Corbett was chief executive of Enthone, Cookson's successful chemistries division. He reports to Nick Salmon, chief executive of Cookson Group.

Corbett will oversee Enthone (the most profitable of the Cookson Electronics' business sectors), the Assembly Materials divisional head office and R&D.

Cookson's laminates group, known familiarly as Polyclad Technologies, will continue to report to Salmon. Polyclad is in the midst of a restructuring program, Cookson said.

Corbett joined Cookson Electronics in 1990 and has held a number of senior positions within the Assembly Materials and Chemistry businesses. He has been Chief Executive of Enthone since 2002.

Polyclad, meanwhile, continues to recover from the effects of the global downturn but has returned to profitability, according to Cookson. The division will continue to report to Salmon for the near term.

Joe Santolucito, chief executive of Polyclad, is leaving the company. Cookson named Rick Richesin, Polyclad's COO, as his successor. Richesin joined Polyclad in 1985 and spent six years as managing director of Polyclad Asia in China and Hong Kong.

In a statement, Nick Salmon said Corbett's "broad ranging experience of our markets and businesses, including his firsthand knowledge of Asia-Pacific, will be invaluable in driving the division forward."

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HONG KONG, Oct. 12 -- Kingboard Chemical Holdings Ltd. plans to seek a majority stake in Elec & Eltek International Holdings, Dow Jones reported today.

Kingboard, which makes PCBs and laminates, currently owns 27.7% of Elec & Eltek International Holdings. If it succeeds in gaining a majority share in the company, Kingboard will then offer to buy the firm's Singapore-listed Elec & Eltek International Co. Ltd.

Elec & Eltek currently provides boards to Intel and IBM.

Kingboard said the deal will enhance the economies of scale of its PCB as the two companies' business and customers are complementary, Dow Jones reported.

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ANAHEIM, CA, Oct. 8, 2004 -- DDi Corp. will lay off up to 175 employees at its Milpitas, CA, manufacturing facility and take cash charges of $1 million as it attempts to lower its costs. The losses will be partially offset by the expected addition of a small number of employees across DDi's other facilities, bringing the total staff reduction to approximately 7% of DDi's worldwide workforce.

Some orders will be moved to DDi facilities in Toronto and Virginia, taking advantage of those plants' lower production costs, said Bruce McMaster, DDi's CEO.

Following the restructuring, the company will continue to employ more than 1,800 people. As a result of the workforce reduction, DDi expects a cash restructuring charge of approximately $1 million to be incurred in the fourth quarter of 2004 and to realize annualized cost savings of between $6 and $7 million.

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KNOXVILLE, TN, Oct. 18 - SMTC Corp. will supply electronics manufacturing services and logistics services to Radio Systems Corp. under a new long-term agreement, the companies jointly said today.

Terms of the deal were not announced.

SMTC will supply engineering, printed circuit board and final product assembly services starting in the current quarter with volumes ramping in 2005.

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CLINTON, NY, Oct. 18 -- Bobet Corp. will service and sell Indium Corp. of America's complete line of assembly products as part of a new supply deal, the companies said today.

Bobet, which was founded in 1997, will handle the greater Arizona area, Indium said in a press release.

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MILPITAS, CA, Oct. 18 -- Solectron Corp. has named Matti Virtanen senior vice president and president of Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He joined the company Oct. 4.

Virtanen will coordinate efforts to expand the company's business and ensure customer satisfaction. He reports to Marty Neese, executive vice president of worldwide sales and account management.

Virtanen has experience at Nokia, Hewlett-Packard and Compaq, where his responsibilities included developing and executing international go-to-market strategies, building senior-level customer relationships, running services and hardware businesses and developing brand strategies.

He has a master's in computer science, business management and HVAC from the Helsinki University of Technology.

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Naples, FL Megan Wendling, president of MW Associates, has combined with the MII and the SMTA to offer a series of Lead-Free Seminars throughout China in 2004 and 2005. Other companies involved with the seminar series include KIC, Kester, Kyzen, Aqueous Technologies, Creative Automation, Vitronics Soltec, MVP, Tyco and BP Microsystems.

 

The first seminar will be held Nov. 3 at the Asia Hotel in Beijing, China, and will focus on the lead-free process. Approximately 180 attendees have signed up for the seminar, which will be presented in Chinese.

 

The series will continue to Shanghai, Schenzen and then to Taiwan in the upcoming year.

 

MW Assoc. marketing agency is also the publisher of Lead-Free Magazine.com. For further details, contact Megan Wendling: (239) 403-0230 or megwend@aol.com.

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SCOTTSDALE, AZ, Oct. 15 -- A pair of economists who track the electronics industry this week offered differing opinions on what's in store for the recovering sector.

The outlook for capital spending is "generally favorable" due to higher demand for replacement equipment and a need for greater efficiencies, said Dr. Larry Chimerine. Companies are sitting on extraordinary cash reserves and financing is available from outside sources, said Chimerine, who spent 14 years as manager of U.S. economic research and forecasting at IBM.

Speaking Tuesday at the TMRC meeting in Scottsdale, Chimerine said that although the environment remains nearly impenetrable to product price hikes, companies will need to invest in new equipment in order to compete. "If you can't raise prices, you must improve productivity 3 to 4% every year just to stay even" with higher energy costs, vendor price hikes and raises to employee wages, Chimerine said.

A somewhat different outlook was given by Ed Henderson of Henderson Ventures. Henderson, a longtime PCB industry analyst, forecast a slowdown in annual global GDP through 2006, and a corresponding drop in equipment sales.

Annual GDP growth worldwide will slow from 4% this yer to 3.5% in 2005 and 3.1% in 2006, Henderson predicted. Likewise, global sales of electronics equipment will drop from 13.4% this year to 9.1% in 2005 and 5.7% in 2006. The figures are based on actual exchange rates.

The bare PCB market, now in its second year of recovery, will also fall, Henderson said. After 7.4% and 13.8% growth in 2003 and 2004, respectively, global PCB sales will slip to 6.4% next year as prelude to a 2006 recession, when sales will be 0.8% lower than in 2005, he said.

While pointing out that oil use as a percent of U.S. GDP has declined steadily over the past 20 years, Henderson said peaking oil prices could precipitate a sharp downturn. "Although a global receission is not in the forecast, a sustained oil price in the $60 to $70 range could produce an economic downturn in 2005."

Trade Barriers

Chimerine singled out trade deficits as a major longterm hurdle for the U.S. economy. Noting trade barriers enacted by several Pacific Rim nations, most notably China, that effectively squeeze American-made products from Asian markets, Chimerine asserted that trade has become an economic growth issue.

"The outsourcing of production [is] the real drag" on the economy, he said. "The manufacturing base must be strong. Not all chips [ICs, potato] are the same."

U.S. trade deficits with China and overall have this year ballooned to all-time highs, with some forecasts predicting a $550 billion gap by year-end.

Pointing to the Bush Administration's current policy of not waging battles over suspected currency manipulation by China, Japan and Taiwan, Chimerine said, "We are insane in keeping this in place," he said.

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ROCHESTER, NY, Oct. 15 - EMA Design Automation has entered an agreement to exclusively distribute and support Chronology's TimingDesigner timing analysis tool in North America.

"Timing analysis plays an increasingly prominent role in the identification and resolution of system operation issues," said Manny Marcano, president and CEO of EMA, in a statement. "Through this collaboration, we can now offer our customers the ability to obtain fast and complete timing margin analysis for their designs."

Chronology is a division of Forte Design Systems.

TimingDesigner is an interactive timing analysis and diagram tool for defining timing constraints, evaluating timing parameters, creating specifications and analyzing complex interfaces.

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SCHÄRDING and RADFELD, Austria -- EV Group, a supplier of wafer-bonding and lithography equipment, and Datacon Technology AG, a flip-chip and die bonding equipment supplier, announced a development, sales and marketing agreement for advanced-chip-to-wafer (AC2W) technology.

AC2W technology offers high device density through stacked devices, short interconnects and higher functional density. It enables the integration of various device technologies such as hybrid integration of IC and MEMS functionality.

The EVG540C2W chip-to-wafer bonder permanently bonds a wafer with single devices under defined process conditions, after they have been fixed with a temporary fixing agent in a high-precision flip-chip bonder from Datacon. The technology used for the bonding process is called face-to-face solid liquid interdiffusion, a technology that uses a metal soldering process.

"Our equipment allows a pre-bonding performance of up to 8500 chips per hour together with placement accuracy of 10µm@3s", said Helmut Rutterschmidt, president of Datacon Technology AG. "[We] can handle top chips as thin as 50 µm and wafers up to 300 mm diameter."

Developed in a joint R&D project, the new equipment platform has been successfully installed at Infineon AG, a major semiconductor device manufacturer.

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HSIN CHU, TAIWAN, Oct. 15 -- Kulicke & Soffa Industries today opened a state-of-the-art probe card manufacturing facility here, a move designed to boost the company's presence in the vertical probe card market.  

The plant has 2,400 sq. meters of floor space and will build enhanced cantilever probe cards. It can also handle probe wire diameters from 75 to 250 microns and very fine pitch probing.

The factory will follow K&S' "copy exact" manufacturing model.

Production on after-sales support center for repair and rebuild services in its final stages, the company said.

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