PhillyInc: Kulicke & Soffa moving headquarters to Singapore

   The average tenure for a chief executive officer is 6.3 years, according to a recent study by a management consulting firm.

   That's nearly two years lower than it was in 2000, says Booz & Co.

   The recent ousters of Tony Hayward, who'd been CEO of BP P.L.C. for little more than three years, and Mark Hurd, who led Hewlett-Packard Co. for just over five years, won't help to reverse that trend.

   It still amazes me that Kulicke & Soffa Industries Inc. has had the same man at the top since 1979 - five times longer than the average CEO rides in the saddle. But as of Sept. 30, C. Scott Kulicke will give way to his successor, Bruno Guilmart.

   Guilmart, 49, comes to Fort Washington-based Kulicke & Soffa from Lattice Semiconductor Corp., where he'd been CEO only since July 2008. Lattice makes components called program-

mable logic products, while Kulicke & Soffa makes assembly equipment used by chip-makers.

   The change in CEO was expected. Kulicke & Soffa had announced in December that Scott Kulicke had planned to retire in June 2011.

   What was not expected was that the leadership change would lead to a relocation of the corporate headquarters for Kulicke & Soffa.

   In a statement Friday, Kulicke & Soffa said that Guilmart would live in Singapore, the center of its global operations. Other unspecified "headquarters functions" will move from Fort Washington to Singa-

pore during its 2011 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.

   Joseph Elgindy, Kulicke & Soffa's manager of investor relations, told me that the shift wouldn't affect the company's engineering team, which accounts for most of the workforce in Fort Wash-

ington. About 200 people work in the Philadelphia area for that team, he said.

   That's a small fraction of the company's global workforce of 2,749 people as of May 3, according to a fact sheet on its website.

   Frankly, it makes a lot of sense for Kulicke & Soffa to have its corporate head-

quarters in Asia, where its decision-makers are closer to its biggest customers.

   Only $6.8 million of the company's $225.2 million in sales for its fiscal year ended Sept. 30 was to U.S. customers, according to its annual report. In contrast, $163.9 million in sales came from seven Asian markets, including Taiwan ($42.4 million), China ($38.5 million), and South Korea ($24.3 million).

   It's never desirable for an area to lose a headquarters. Then again, Philadelphia has never been a Silicon Any-

thing, so it's hard to fault a strategic move like this.

   Plus, high-paying engineering jobs do belong to the coveted "knowledge economy." The jobs that are staying in Fort Washington mean the region is still exporting its knowledge and remaining relevant to big-

name manufacturers such as Intel Corp., Micron Technology Inc., and Texas Instruments Inc.

Contact Mike Armstrong at 215-854-2980 or marmstrong@phillynews.com. See his blog at .