William J. Almon Chairman, Sigma Designs

Sigma Designs, Inc., provider of connected media platforms, has terminated its Preferred Stock Rights Agreement. Additionally, in connection with its board’s annual review of corporate governance policies, Sigma announced the appointment of William J. Almon, an independent director, as the chairman of the board.

Sigma recently amended its Preferred Stock Rights Agreement in April 2012. It subsequently reviewed this action with a number of its institutional shareholders. Based, in part, on their feedback, Sigma’s board of directors determined to terminate the Preferred Stock Rights Agreement entirely.

"We engaged in a collaborative discussion with certain of our shareholders and listened to their views. We believe it is in the best interest of all our shareholders to terminate the Rights Plan at this time," said Thinh Tran, Sigma’s president and CEO.

The board also recently completed its annual evaluation of the company’s corporate governance policies and procedures. In connection with this review, the board determined to formally separate the role of chairman of the board from the role of CEO. As a result, the board appointed William Almon, who had been serving as Sigma’s lead independent director for the past three years, as the chairman of the board.

 Almon is an industry veteran who has brought an independent perspective to Sigma and the operation of its board of directors for many years. He has executive experience in technology companies ranging from Fortune 500 enterprises to start-ups. While at IBM for 30 years, he served in many executive positions including as executive assistant to the president. As a VP, he played a key role in taking IBM into the OEM business as well as small form factor disk drives. He retired from IBM in 1987 after 30 years of service, most recently as VP Low End Storage. Almon served as the president, CEO and chairman of the board of Grandis, Inc., a solid-state memory company, from May 2002 to June 2006, where he helped pioneer solid state Magnetic Random Access Memory (MRAM). He also served as president and COO of Conner Peripherals, Inc., a manufacturer of computer disk drives and storage management devices, when they set the record as the fastest company to reach the Fortune 500.

Almon also currently serves as COB of Futek Furnace Inc. and Rollbase Inc., and on the board of directors of CBC High School.

He commented on his appointment as chairman of the board: "I am honored to take this position at this point in time. Many new markets are in the making, and they are ours if we stay focused and execute our plans."