Happy Birthday, DAAMIT!

EXACTLY YEAR AGO, at 18:44 (6:44PM) Central European Time (CET), I received a note from AMD spinners confirming that the acquisition of Array Technologies Incorporated Technologies Inc had been completed and that ATI ihad become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

Then the whole world inside and outside AMD turned upside down. If you follow our site, you've tracked all the ups and downs but leaders of the company can reflect today what kind of a roller-coaster ride this takeover has been.

If AMD does not draw smart conclusions, the company will ultimately go the way Apple went... in the 80s.

Biggest mistake for both CEO and COO of Daamit was letting Human Resource department gunning ATI people off, ending up with projects that were constantly getting delayed.

After a wave of silent re-hirings of key people, AMD is now looking at a brighter future - still tamed with departures of Henri Richard, Dave Orton, Peter Edinger, Andrzej Bania, Lorenzo Martone and many others.

Time will tell if Hector and Dirk screwed things up or not. All we know is that AMD's market cap today is at the levels of ATI Technologies alone (at ATI's finest hour), meaning around 15 billion dollars of shareholder value got wiped over the course of a single year.

Joint market cap was around 20.87 billion USD - Daamit is now valued at 6.99 billion USD. µ

Several readers asked if ATI really is called Array Technologies Incorporated Technologies Inc.

Here's proof.

Caffeteria where AMD Canucks are having their lunch.