In a rather surprising move, Advanced Micro Devices on Thursday announced the appointment of Thomas Seifert as chief financial officer. Prior to AMD, Mr. Seifert served as CFO in Qimonda, now insolvent maker of dynamic random access memory. Mr. Seifert succeeds Robert Rivet, who was previously promoted to chief operations and administrative officer.

“Thomas is a talented industry veteran with a wealth of knowledge and experience managing the operations and finances of companies in the most difficult and competitive sectors of the semiconductor industry. This knowledge and experience will enable him to further strengthen AMD’s financial foundation and help accelerate our transformation into a product design and marketing leader,” said Dirk Meyer, chief executive officer of AMD.

Immediately prior to joining AMD, Seifert served as chief operating officer and chief financial officer of Qimonda AG, where he led the formation and subsequent IPO of the company and continued to serve till the firm became bankrupt.

Prior to Qimonda, Seifert served as senior vice president and general manager in the Wireless Business Group at Infineon AG. He has also held executive positions at Siemens AG, White Oak Semiconductor, and Altis Semiconductor, a joint venture launched in 1992 between IBM and Siemens Semiconductor.

It is fairly strange that AMD decided to switch chief financial officer amid the global economic crisis. On the other hand, a reason why AMD decided to hire a new CFO can be the fact that the firm is about to announce its third quarter results, which may be lower than the firm originally anticipated. Earlier both Mr. Meyer and Mr. Rivet said that AMD product company will reach breakeven point in the second half of this year.

Tags: AMD, Business