Ben Gilbert: evaluation

Transcript context

…Taking it at the flood, yeah. However, setting the R&D at 8% did not invite any opposition from the board. But suddenly increasing capital spending threefold (I think) did invite a lot of questions from the board. Our practice in the board meetings back then, well, even now, most of the directors are from overseas—US and England. We would email the agenda to them two weeks before the board meeting. Then the night before the board meeting, I would invite the independent directors to dinner. That dinner, the conversation was not on record. So the independent directors, actually more than three quarters of our directors are independent directors. Anyway, in the night before and the evening before the meeting, they had the opportunity to ask me questions if they had any. But on this matter of vastly increased capital spending, they didn’t even wait until they got to that dinner. Because this was effectively betting a huge amount of the company’s cash on this node, this process, this generation. Yeah. They called the chief of the general council. The general council is also the secretary to the board. They called him. At that time, it was an American. The general council was an American, and said we want to talk to the chairman. We don’t like this idea at all. Anyway, I talked with them on the phone about a week or so before the board meeting. This is something that, of course, I told them what I have now just told you, inputs from our market forecast, inputs from our R&D, inputs from our new business development department. Of course, they didn’t believe it. You really can’t convince anybody on something like this. At the end, I had to say, well look. I heard you, but I am still the guy that’s responsible for the operation of the company. You need to let me go ahead with this one. So they were satisfied with that.…

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