George Perlegos

George Perlegos was for 22 years chairman & CEO of Atmel Corporation (NYSE: ATML), a global leader in the manufacturing of microcontrollers and other specialized electronics components in San Jose, Ca. He was born in Tripoli, Greece. His family came to the United States when he was 12 years of age. Though he entered San Jose State University intending to study medicine, the semiconductor industry attracted his attention. He worked in Silicon Valley upon graduation, and then received his PhD in Electrical Engineering at Stanford, working at Intel and helping to found SEEQ Technology. He is legendary for his work on EEPROM flash memory technology at Intel. He bootstrapped semiconductor company Atmel in 1984 with $23,000 of his own money. The company designs, develops, manufactures and sells a range of integrated circuits products, including microcontrollers and advanced logic, mixed-signal, nonvolatile memory and radio frequency components. Perlegos was terminated in August 2006 after an investigation where the board of directors accused him and his brother Gust (an executive vice president of the company) of spending $235,000 in company funds on airplane tickets for themselves and their immediate families, although the Delaware Chancery Court expressed its “discomfort with the thoroughness and fairness of the investigation and with the decisions.” Perlegos called a meeting to replace five of the existing board members, which the board attempted to cancel. In March 2007, the Delaware Chancery Court ruled that the shareholder meeting must proceed, but this action was completed after Perlegos was removed as president. The action resulted in a special shareholder vote, which failed to generate the necessary 50 percent for Perlegos. In 2011, he reportedly participated in raising equity for eConais, a wireless module manufacturer and solutions company launched in 2010 in Patras, Greece and expanded to San Jose in 2012. Atmel’s current market value is $3.54 billion. Despite the conflicts at Atmel, Perlegos remains a force in Silicon Valley as a semiconductor consultant. He is among a host of Greek names listed under the company Silicon Valley Seed Funding Group. George is married to Angeliki Perlegos. They are members of Leadership 100. Perlegos is a supporter of St. Basil Greek Orthodox Church in Stockton, Ca.