A View from C-Level

What's THIS guy smiling about? Perhaps it was because he called the turnaround almost 18 months ago in a famous trade-show speech in Las Vegas. It also could be that his company's stock has moved from $13 a share to $40 a share in a year's time. He's been both celebrated by analysts and pilloried by them in his time at National Semiconductor, but CEO Brian Halla is not shy about taking risks and taking the heat when things go south or spreading the praise when they go north. Hear what "Nostradamus" Halla has to say about the industry's recovery.

1. What's the outlook? Do you see undercapacity any time soon? [ WMV | Real Video ]
2. Do you buy the theory that the semiconductor growth is slowing down over time? [ WMV | Real Video ]
3. In your tenure here, National has had a couple of different incarnations. You're now focused on analog businesses, which is hyper competitive. [ WMV | Real Video ]
4. The analog strategy requires a much different manufacturing strategy than you had just a few short years ago when you were more digitally focused. Talk about that. [ WMV | Real Video ]
5. Is offshoring a major part of your strategy? Or is it less relevant because analog design is such a "black art?" [ WMV | Real Video ]
6. So for you, what's the trigger point for a design center in China? [ WMV | Real Video ]
7. Engineering schools are still teaching to the microprocessor design. How much of a problem is that for kids coming out of school? [ WMV | Real Video ]
8. Where do you stand on expensing stock options? [ WMV | Real Video ]
9. Halla discusses his career path, from Intel to LSI to National Semiconductor. [ WMV | Real Video ]
10. In a recession like this, how do you motivate particularly your senior management team when their incentives are basically non-existent? [ WMV | Real Video ]
11. What was the toughest decision you had to make? Selling off Geode? Fairchild? [ WMV | Real Video ]
12. Every decade in electronics has its paradigm. What's this decade's paradigm? [ WMV | Real Video ]
13. When you made the digital to analog transition, how did you manage the cost structure, which is entirely different in those two worlds? [ WMV | Real Video ]