Chief executive pasquale Pistorio of STMicroelectronics thinks the chip industry may soon be ripe for consolidation. So with $2.7 billion in cash, he's on the hunt. "ST will be the consol-idator ―not the consolidated," he vows. The grandfatherly, 67-year-old Sicilian, who has run the Geneva-based $6.4 billion (sales) chipmaker for 23 years, is looking for value, not glamour, and wants to buy outside Europe, "preferably the U.S. or Japan." How about Motorola's chip unit, which within the next year will split off from the parent company through a stock offering? It could make sense. Neither company rules out the possibility that ST ;ht step up to the plate. "Pasquale has always had a soft spot for Motorola," says Chris Belden, Motorola's vice president of technology and manufacturing. Pistorio in fact cut his teeth at Motorola. He wanted to be an engineer and build space-age devices―out of radio tubes―"but an agent of Motorola [the world's biggest semiconductor maker at the time] offered me 20% more to be a salesman." He peddled chips in Turin, cycling to visit potential clients. In his 13 years with the Chicago-based firm, Pistorio rose to become head of world marketing. He surprised everyone when he left in 1980 to join a tiny Italian tech company called SGS, which later became STMicro.
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