Michel Desbard

Michel Desbard

Michel Desbard started his career as financial auditor with the Thomson Group, a major French defence firm, and was appointed Financial Director at Thomson's semi-conductor division in 1977. In 1981, he moved to California to join Fairchild Semi-Conductor as Financial Controller for the memory division. In 1983, Michel returned to France as Matra-Harris Semi-Conductor's Chief Operations Officer, and became Chairman and CEO in 1989. He sold Matra-Harris to Temics (Daimler-Benz group) in 1992 and remained with Temic as Matra-Harris' CEO for another 4 years. Michel has been a serial entrepreneur since he left Temic in 1996 to start a California-based company, T.square, developing network processors. Initially funded by US venture capitalists such as Walden, Sofinnova US and Alta partners, T.square was successfully sold to Globespan in 2000. He is also a business angel and a board member in several semi-conductors companies.