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Amad Chitilla worked in the chip industry for 18 years before becoming CEO of the

Semiconductor manufacturer MEMC in 2009. As a veteran of the industry, Chatilla well

understood the difficulties of the silicon wafer business.

Semiconductors are a commodity and the company was facing intense pricing pressure from Chinese competitors.

Chautila had hard choices to make about where to steer the company. So he undertook an

internal review of the semiconductor business. In what became CEO, my

reflection after reviewing it with the executive team at the time on the board and

I visited 150 companies just to learn end to end what's going on.

I felt it's an energy play, it's not a technology play by any means and the question was should we double down on it or should we exit?

Being an energy company is materially different from being a commodity technology provider in a hyper competitive low margin business.

Keeping the company relevant meant moving further downstream.

So shortly after taking over as CEO of M.E.M.C.

Chautila started searching for an acquisition target.

He zeroed in on Sun Edison, the pioneer of the power purchase agreement for Solar PV.

And the reason is because I looked at many companies, but Sun Edison had the right platform, the right thinking.

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