Saxby to quit as ARM boss after 15 years

Sir Robin Saxby, one of the doyens of Britain's technology sector, is retiring as chairman of ARM Holdings, the company he helped found 15 years ago. Sir Robin, who will be succeeded by Doug Dunn, an independent non-executive of the company, will step down from the board in October when he assumes the position of president of the Institute of Engineering and Technology.

He leaves ARM as a company capitalised at more than £1.6bn. News of Sir Robin's retirement was given to City analysts who had been called together yesterday to be given a run-through of the group's progress since its £500m acquisition of the US group Artisan. The City was sceptical of the deal at the time, given that it valued Artisan, a designer of physical chip components, at more than 50 times that year's earnings. Since then there have been two revenue forecast cuts that have done little to win new followers.

Warren East, ARM's chief executive, gave investors an upbeat view of the acquisition. "We are 15 months in [since buying Artisan] and we already have 45 nanometer technology [the next generation of chips]."

As for Sir Robin's departure, he said: "In Robin's 15 years at ARM, as a founder, chief executive and chairman, we have earned a reputation as one of the world's most respected technology companies and become a global leader in semiconductor intellectual property."

Mr East has been chief executive since 2002 when Sir Robin gave up the dual role of chairman and chief executive before the corporate governance changes ushered in by the Higgs report.

Sir Robin, who will remain associated with ARM as chairman emeritus, was knighted in the 2002 New Year Honours List. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Liverpool, where he is a visiting professor, and has received honorary doctorates from Loughborough University and the University of Essex.

Sir Robin said: "I am delighted to be able to continue to act as an ambassador for ARM globally and hope to encourage young people to take up a role in engineering, science and technology, as well as broadening my knowledge of other engineering disciplines."