Co Clare man Tim Leyden has been appointed chief financial officer of Western Digital, a Silicon Valley company that produces a large proportion of the world’s hard disks.
Leyden will work alongside another Irishman, John Coyne, who is chief executive of the company.
Leyden, who hails from Clarecastle, is a senior figure in the global software sector and has joined Western Digital from Sage Software where he was a senior vice-president and chief financial officer.
This is his second time to join Western Digital, having previously worked at the company between 1983 and 2000 across a variety of senior positions including worldwide finance, manufacturing and IT.
Coyne also joined Western Digital in 1983 after starting his own controller board manufacturing facility in Ireland.
Coyne rose swiftly through the ranks and took over as CEO in November last.
Both Coyne and Leyden worked together on the acquisition and integration teams when Western Digital entered the hard drive business in 1988.
Western Digital, which was established in the Seventies, manufactures a large proportion of the world’s hard disk drives.
Under its current management team the company doubled its revenues from US$2bn in 2000 to US$4.3bn in 2006.
The company is also regarded as one of the most profitable firms in Silicon Valley. It moved from a loss of US$188m to an income of US$396m, expanded cash and investments to US$699m and has posted one of the IT industry’s leading returns on invested capital.
“Tim’s deep knowledge of the company, its finances and operations and the hard drive industry will be major assets to me and the entire Western Digital organisation,” said Coyne.
By John Kennedy
