Pasquale Pistorio

 

The Fab Man

 

Italian Pasquale Pistorio, former CEO and president of STMicroelectronics, one of the world’s largest semiconductor companies, saw the potential in Singapore as an entry point into Asia as well as having a pool of impressive “human capital”. This convinced him to build a wafer fabrication plant here in 1982, paving the way for a vibrant semiconductor industry in Singapore.

 

Pasquale Pistorio started working as a Motorola salesman in 1963 after he graduated with a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the Polytechnic of Turin in Italy. He took up the job because it paid well and “I was anxious to get married,” said the Italian, who was born in 1936.

Over the years, he rose through the ranks in Motorola to eventually become corporate vice president of the company, in charge of the International Semiconductor Division. In 1980, Pistorio became the chief executive officer of Italian state-owned SGS Microelettronica (SGS). At that time, it was in the red and had survived only because the Italian government was paying for their losses every year. “Some people said we will die. Some were recommending that shareholders sell us out,” Pistorio recalled. By 1983, Pistorio managed to steer SGS into the black and the company has been profitable since. Other European semiconductor companies were still running a heavy deficit.

SGS’s turnaround in fortunes was partly due to Pistorio’s strategy to tap into Singapore’s human capital. Foreign companies with interests in Singapore had preferred to conduct low-cost manufacturing in the city-state, and retain high-technology activities in their home country. SGS went against the grain by establishing high-end manufacturing activities here, even though shareholders were initially uncertain about this decision.

In 1982, SGS broke the ground for Singapore’s first wafer fabrication plant and a research centre. The research unit designed electronic circuits to be manufactured on a silicon wafer. Two years later, the wafers were ready to be shipped.

Around this time, SGS also set up its regional headquarters in Singapore, shifting all components of its regional operations, which included the plant and research centre, here. It also developed a global logistics centre at Loyang. The success of Pistorio’s plans convinced his colleagues that he had been right to see Singapore as a point of entry into other Asian markets. Other semiconductor firms were not as far-sighted—the next factory with comparable technology opened here 10 years after SGS, said Pistorio.

Pistorio always thinks big. This trait of his came through when he was being interviewed for this book. He expounded passionately on ideas about business management—how to ensure growth and expansion and encouraging a resilient company culture. Pistorio has honed his business management ideas over time. In 1987, he led SGS to a merger with French company, Thomson Semiconductor, to become SGS-Thomson Microelectronics. He wanted it to be among the top 10 in the world. Pistorio called this Vision 2000. He achieved this earlier than envisioned—the company entered the targeted ranks in 1997.

In 1998, SGS-Thomson changed its name to STMicroelectronics. In 2001, STMicroelectronics surpassed expectations to rank among the top five semiconductor companies in the world.

Pistorio is also remembered for being a staunch advocate of environmental protection. From 1993, he began to integrate environmental protection into STMicroelectronics’ corporate philosophy. The company produced an environmental decalogue, deliberately named as such to imply its non-negotiable quantitative environmental targets for all its firms. The decalogue was a set of commitments by the company towards several targets—reducing electricity use and water pollution, promoting recycling and the development of an environmental management system for all of its manufacturing sites. In Singapore, the government provided the company with incentives to be environmentally friendly.

By the time Pistorio retired in 2005, STMicroelectronics had invested in three wafer fabrication plants here. STMicroelectronics had hired 8,700 people in Singapore, becoming Singapore’s third largest foreign employer.

Pistorio remembers vividly an exchange between the late Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and former Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi that gives an insight into his personal work ethic. “When Romano Prodi was in Singapore, he told Lee how nice it was to have flowers all year round. Lee then replied, ‘But there is a problem. The bees stop making honey.’ It is a lesson to say that if the food is ready, you stop working,” he recalled.

Today, Pistorio continues to be a mover and shaker in his own way. He is founder and president of the Pistorio Foundation, a non-profit organisation which aims to better the lives of children by providing them with education, and by improving school infrastructure. Based in Switzerland, the foundation has a chapter in Singapore. It operates projects in Cambodia, Thailand, Morocco and Burkina Faso.

For his contributions to Singapore, Pistorio was conferred the Public Service Star in 1999, and the Honorary Citizen Award in 2003.

References

Antonio Battiato, “1997-2012 The Environmental Management System of the
ST Microelectronics Site of Catania is 15 Years Old,” in Pathways to Environmental Sustainability: Methodologies and Experiences, ed. Roberta Salomone and Giuseppe Saija
(Springer Science & Business Media, 2014).

Deborah Wise, “International Report; SGS-Thomson’s Goal: Big Enough to Survive,”
The New York Times, March 20, 1989.

Grace Chng and Hsung Bee Hwa, “How Microchip Firm got out of the red,”
The Straits Times, May 6, 1985.

John A. Matthews, Dong-Sung Cho, Tiger Technology: The Creation of a Semiconductor Industry
in East Asia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

Pistorio, Pasquale, interviewed by Doug Fairbairn, April 26, 2010,
reference Number X5809.2010, transcript, Computer History Museum.

Interview with Pasquale Pistorio in June 2015.

 

 

Pasquale Pistorio
Italy, b.1936