Cypress Ceo Responds to Nun

Doris Gormley, OSF

Director, Corporate Social Responsibility

The sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia

Our Lady of Angels Convent-Glen Riddle

Aston, PA 19014

Dear Sister Gormley,

I appreciate your concerns about representation of the minority in the board of directors and I thank you for trying to actively take part in the affairs of the company. But there are certain things I’d like to clarify to you on this ground.

The semiconductor business is a tough one with significant competition from the Japanese, Taiwanese and Koreans. There have been more corporate causalities than survivors in such businesses. So such decisions cannot be taken without much thought into it. The Board member post is very crucial one and it influences the company’s operation. If a wrong person is chosen it may lead the company to its fall. The essential criteria for Cypress board membership are as follows:

• Experience as CEO of an important technology company.

• Direct expertise in the semiconductor business based on education and management experience.

• Direct experience in the management of a company that buys from the semiconductor industry.

A search based on these criteria usually yields a male who is 50 plus years old, has a master’s degree in an engineering science and has moved up the managerial ladder to the top spot in one or more corporations. Unfortunately there are currently few minorities and almost no women who chose to be engineering graduate students 30 years ago. This picture will be dramatically different in 10 years, due to greater diversification of graduate students in the 80s.

We would love to embrace the opportunity to include any women or minority person who could help us as a director, because we pursue talent and we don’t want to restrict our opportunities in providing quotas as you have suggested. I believe that placing arbitrary racial or gender quotas on corporate boards are fundamentally wrong. Therefore, Cypress will not meet this...