Sarnoff Europe Completes Management Buy-Out of Sarnoff's ESD Protection Business

-- Sarnoff Corporation (www.sarnoff.com) and Sarnoff Europe (www.sarnoffeurope.com) today announced a management buy-out agreement for Kogeni bvba to acquire the shares of Sarnoff Europe and gain exclusive ownership of Sarnoff Europe’s TakeCharge® ESD protection, intellectual property, and client portfolio, effective immediately.

The management team of Kogeni bvba, led by Executive Director Koen Verhaege and Finance and HR Director Inge Vercruysse, co-founded Sarnoff Europe in 2000 and have independently run the business from its inception.

“Sarnoff Europe has been an extremely successful operation, thanks to the joint efforts and management of Sarnoff Europe and Sarnoff Corporation,” said Sarnoff Corporation President and CEO Don Newsome. “Sarnoff Europe’s innovative products and solutions have consistently delivered high value to their customers and allowed for the high market adoption rate enjoyed today. Their growth has allowed Sarnoff Corporation to focus on other, more synergistic core business areas. We wish Sarnoff Europe continued success.”

Customers and IC users can expect to soon learn more about Sarnoff Europe’s new name, business models, products, tools, services and physical IP solutions for ICs. The strong and well-recognized product brand name “TakeCharge” will remain.

“This is a new start and a wonderful opportunity for this great company, our customers, and our fantastic employees,” said Koen Verhaege. “We will accelerate our advanced ESD solutions and IP development and will continue to hold ourselves to the most stringent quality standards to achieve the highest customer and employee satisfaction.”

Sarnoff Europe provides ESD solutions that are complementary to public, foundry or partner-owned solutions. Sarnoff Europe’s solutions focus on providing high ESD reliability in harsh environments (e.g. IEC-61000-4-2 level 4), low capacitive (<100fF) clamps for high speed SerDes or RF applications, low leakage (< 1nA) approaches for mobile and/or green applications, and low cost ESD and latch-up robustness for high voltage applications (such as display drivers and regulators). Silicon proven solutions are available for various process nodes and foundries under the TakeCharge brand name.

Sarnoff Europe also offers consultancy services based on its extended knowledge of ESD solutions and performs ESD testing via its in-house fully equipped laboratory.

About Sarnoff Corporation

Sarnoff Corporation (www.sarnoff.com) delivers vision, video and semiconductor technology innovations that empower government and commercial clients to see/sense, understand and control complex environments. Founded in 1942 as RCA Laboratories, Sarnoff makes continuous breakthroughs in real-time video processing for defence, security and surveillance; ICs, lasers, imaging and sensing devices; end-to-end video solutions. Sarnoff is a subsidiary of SRI International.

About Sarnoff Europe

Sarnoff Europe bvba (www.sarnoffeurope.com) headquartered in Gistel, Belgium, provides solutions for ICs. Today, Sarnoff Europe focuses its product development and worldwide business on licensing, engineering tools and design services derived from the TakeCharge® ESD protection IP portfolio. Sarnoff Europe bvba is now an independent IP provider, fully owned by Kogeni bvba.