Chuck del Prado: mission accomplished?

Every son who succeeds his father in the family business has a lot to prove. To himself and his father, but perhaps most of all to the outside world. Even if never said out loud, there always will be suspicions that junior might not have gotten the job if daddy wasn’t pulling the strings. Chuck del Prado, however, had his leadership openly questioned almost immediately after he took the helm from his father at ASM International (which isn’t really a family business, of course). He had to go all the way to the Dutch Supreme Court to get a chance to prove himself. When we look back at his reign over the company in the past decade, Del Prado was clearly worthy of the job, though.

Del Prado, an Industrial Engineering and Technology Management graduate, joined ASMI in 2001 after having worked in various positions at IBM and ASML. He got a taste of the company and its customers in a sales and marketing position but was thrown in the pressure cooker in 2003, when he became general manager of ASM America. This division serves one of the most demanding semiconductor manufacturers in the world: Intel.