SAN JOSE, Calif. – Sept. 18, 2007 – Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) today announced the appointment of Steve Milligan as chief financial officer. His near-term task will be to accelerate Hitachi GST’s plans for achieving sustained profitability. Milligan was most recently senior vice president and CFO for Western Digital Corp.
“We are firmly committed to establishing financial health for Hitachi GST and have recruited a team of HDD industry experts to achieve this. Steve Milligan is now an integral part of this team, whose primary focus is to put Hitachi GST on track for business excellence and sustained profitability,” said Hiroaki Nakanishi, chief executive officer, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies.
Milligan brings a unique combination of experiences to help advance Hitachi GST’s business transformation efforts:
* A solid understanding of the hard drive business from inside and outside the industry;
* Process, financial and operational knowledge that can yield gains in high-volume, low-cost manufacturing businesses;
* Demonstrated success in business combinations and related integration;
* Global experience with large multinational companies coupled with a successful track record of re-engineering financial controls.
Before Western Digital, Milligan worked for Dell Inc. from 1997 to 2002 in financial and accounting roles of increasing responsibility.
Milligan’s hard-drive roots trace back to his early experience at Price Waterhouse, where he worked for 12 years. At Price Waterhouse, he was responsible for auditing IBM’s hard disk drive business among others. His experience with IBM and Dell also helped Milligan develop a deep understanding of the PC industry – a valuable asset as the PC industry represents nearly 70 percent of overall hard-drive consumption.