Press releases from Picochip

Ernst & Young award Picochip CEO “Entrepreneur Of The Year”

19 June 2008

Bath, England, 20 June 2008: – Picochip is pleased to announce that Guillaume d'Eyssautier, president and CEO, has been awarded a top accolade at the South Region final of Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur Of The Year awards. He fought off competition from 52 of the region’s finest businessmen and women to win the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year award in the Technology and Communications category, at the award ceremony held last week at the London Hilton Metropole Hotel. d'Eyssautier was commended by the independent judging panel for his ‘determination’ and ‘innovation’.

Picochip designs, develops and manufactures silicon and software solutions which enable manufacturers in the telecoms industry to deploy wireless infrastructure more efficiently, with more functionality and with less power usage. The company’s products are currently used by more than 100 telecoms companies in 60 countries.

Kevin Harkin, lead partner of Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur Of The Year awards programme in the South said, “The calibre of this year’s Entrepreneur Of The Year award finalists was higher than ever and is a testament to the entrepreneurial spirit and determination which is inherent to the UK’s business community.”

Continuing he added: “Guillaume’s success is a credit to his determination and drive to succeed. He has developed a strong business with excellent financial credentials, which continues to grow and expand. He is a very worthy award winner and I wish him the best of luck for the next stage of the awards programme.”

“I am truly honoured to have won this prestigious award from Ernst & Young for Picochip,” said Guillaume d'Eyssautier, president and CEO at Picochip. “It would not have been possible without the support of such a fantastic, enthusiastic and committed team. I would like to congratulate the whole of Picochip for each contributing in their own way to this success and outstanding achievement.”

The South Region Entrepreneur Of The Year award winners were decided by an independent judging panel, which was chaired by Terry Burt of 2e2 Group and also included Chris Harrison of Leaders' Quest, Peter Harris of Hotel Chocolat, Clive Beharrell of Enotria Winecellars and former chairman of Fat Face, David Brownlow of Huntswood CTC Ltd, Tom Black of Detica, and Jamie Pike formerly of Foseco International Limited.

Commenting on the award winners, Terry Burt said: “This year’s South Region Entrepreneur Of The Year award winners displayed true entrepreneurial spirit and, through hard work and determination, have built incredibly successful businesses.”

Guillaume d’Eyssautier will now go through to the National Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year award finals, held in London on 6 October at The Grosvenor House Hotel, to compete with the other regional award recipients from across the UK.

Picochip is the only semiconductor company focused solely on wireless infrastructure, and provides baseband solutions to address the key challenges of cost, development time and flexibility for the next generation of wireless systems. The company’s multicore processors deliver a world-beating price/performance combination. Picochip is the industry standard architecture for WiMAX basestations, and is the leading supplier for the new wave of femtocells, with support for for HSPA, WiMAX, LTE, TD-SCDMA, cdma2000/EvDO and GSM/GPRS/EDGE.