AMD Loses Three Top Executives Today, Byrne, LaForce, & Naik all Leave

AMD announced today that it was losing three of their top executives today. John Byrne, Collete LaForce, and Rajan Naik are all leaving Advanced Micro Devices as of earlier today. John Byrne was promoted from Chief Sales Officer to SVP and GM of Computing and Graphics Business Group seven months ago. This is a surprisingly short stint in that position, it’s reported that he is moving on to pursue other opportunities. Back in 2012 Collete joined AMD as the Chief Marketing Officer and has remained at that position ever since and while it has been announced that she is leaving AMD, no reasons have been stated at this point. Rajan Naik who also joined AMD in 2012 as the Chief Strategy Officer is also leaving with no reasons given.

AMD did make a short statement about the changes today: These changes, including the additions of Forrest Norrod and James Clifford to our management team last quarter, collectively are part of implementing an optimal organization design and leadership team to further sharpen our execution and position AMD for growth.

AMD had a busy year with the promotion of Lisa Su to the president and CEO of AMD. There is a question that is lingering on many minds though. Is Lisa Su cleaning house to bring in her own people, or are people unhappy at AMD?

In recent times, AMD has lost ground to Intel’s market share. Currently Intel holds 82% of the market share in PC chips. AMD was able to show some profit in Q3 of 2014, hopefully with these changes, and likely more to come AMD can continue that trend, gain some ground and build a little bit of momentum for the coming year!