Broadcom Nominates Slate to Take Over Qualcomm Board

December 11, 2017

In a move that has been widely seen as the first formal step in a hostile takeover attempt, Broadcom announced last week that it has created a slate of 11 nominees to put on the Qualcomm board, Reuters reported. Last month, Qualcomm rejected a $103 billion cash-and-stock bid from Broadcom, claiming it dramatically undervalued the company.

The tension between the two parties is quickly escalating. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Broadcom sought to communicate with Qualcomm before it decided to approach a hostile takeover. In a statement, Broadcom Chief Executive Hock Tan said the company has “repeatedly attempted to engage with Qualcomm, and despite stockholder and customer support for the transaction, Qualcomm has ignored those opportunities.”

Qualcomm also took a shot at Broadcom, claiming the company lacks innovation and focuses on predictable markets, while Qualcomm, on the other hand, takes pride in being a leader in innovative markets. “Qualcomm stockholders expect a board that will support this innovation while evaluating objectively the full range of opportunities available to maximize value for all Qualcomm stockholders,” Tom Horton, Qualcomm’s presiding director, said in a statement.

To shed light on the current director situation at Qualcomm, Equilar examined the Qualcomm board for insight into how it fares in terms of composition, as well as the extensions of the board’s network.

According to Equilar BoardEdge, the 11-person Qualcomm board consists of nine male directors—including the Chairman, Presiding Director and CEO—and two female directors. The company is performing slightly better in terms of women on boards than the overall average of Russell 3000 boards. Average tenure for the board is just a little over 5 years and average age is 59—both numbers are not particularly high, indicating that the company already may view board refreshment as a key priority and is avoiding a “stale” board with non-innovative ideas.

Additionally, each current board member has an extensive network of connections, beyond just those they’ve interacted with at Qualcomm. For instance, according to BoardEdge data, Presiding Director Tom Horton has established 90 C-suite and board connections spanning 66 unique companies. To further examine data on Horton’s connections, click the image or button below to view his connections profile.

Download Executive and Board Connections

Overall, the Qualcomm board has a total of 996 board and executive connections. Whether or not this network of influential members of corporate America will play a role in the standoff with Broadcom is unknown. However, the fact that Qualcomm’s board does appear to be above average on the progressive scale may influence shareholders to favor the company, particularly as they pay closer attention to matters of diversity and refreshment.

The coming weeks will provide a better understanding of what’s to come with respect to Broadcom’s attempts at a takeover of Qualcomm’s board. It will be worth keeping a close eye on the scope of Qualcomm’s board composition if Broadcom is indeed successful, particularly in regards to how it will stack up in terms of diversity and overall network.

Reach out to Equilar to learn more about BoardEdge connections or request a download of any of the CEOs or board members mentioned in this article, as well as any of the -plus executives and board members in the database. Include specific requests for individual downloads in the comment field.

Amit Batish, Content Manager, authored this post. Please contact Dan Marcec, Director of Content & Communications, at dmarcec@equilar.com for more information on Equilar research and data analysis.