Board
Executive Director
Kenn joined the Board in April 2007. From 2001 to 2006, Kenn was CEO of Elixent where he completed a successful sale of the business to Matsushita of Japan. Prior to Elixent he was Senior Vice President Sales at ARC International plc where he managed the restructuring of its international sales team. After two years of sales growth, ARC completed a successful London Stock Exchange flotation in September 2000 with a market capitalization of £500m. Before joining ARC, Kenn was Managing Director of Actel Inc's European FPGA businesses.
Non-Executive Directors
Dr John Read is an experienced manager with a record of developing profitable high-tech semiconductor businesses. In the late 1990s he was a director of GEC Plessey Semiconductors and joint president of GPS Inc. In California. Since then he has been involved with a number of fabless startups: he was a director of Alphamosaic Limited (which was sold to Broadcom Europe Limited), and served on the board of Anadigm Limited from 2000 to 2003. He is an active mentor for the Cambridge Entrepreneurship Centre and for SETSquared in Surrey. Other positions held include technical director of Texas Instruments in the UK, technical director at STC Telecommunications, and director of engineering at Honeywell's Solid State Electronics in Minnesota. Dr Read is a director of the semiconductor company Si-Light Technologies Limited and a director of Iceni Advisory Limited. He became a Director of Cyan in November 2005 and was appointed Chairman in October 2007
Simon joined the board in March 2010. He is an experienced financial executive with over twenty years' experience in the semiconductor and technology sectors. He is currently an independent adviser to both start-up and listed technology companies providing a range of assistance including fund raising, business planning and contract negotiation.
Prior to establishing himself as an independent adviser in 2007, Simon held the position of Chief Financial Officer/Director of Finance at multi-national businesses in both the UK and USA since 1997 and his experiences include multiple business acquisitions/disposals, fund raising, business planning, cash management and customer contract negotiation.
Before 1997, Simon was a Management Consultant in both the UK and USA where he managed a team of consultants on multiple implementations of ERP systems. Simon qualified with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales in 1991.
Roles of the Board Members
Kenn is responsible for the Group's worldwide operations. He is also responsible for leading the strategic development of the Group and for managing the implementation of that strategy.
John Read and Simon Smith are independent non-executive directors with responsibility for overseeing the executive and for ensuring that the financial performance of the Company is properly reported upon and monitored, and considering reports from the auditors relating to accounts and internal control-systems. They also have responsibility for reviewing the performance of and setting the compensation of the executive directors. Non-Executive Directors do not have any day to day involvement in the running of the business.
John Read chairs the nominations and remuneration committees and Simon Smith chairs the audit committee.
The Company is in the process of recruiting a further non-executive director in line with corporate governance best practice.