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You'd expect such a fast promotion to chief executive to happen to someone at a Silicon Valley dot-com, but probably not at the once- stodgy Royal Philips Electronics NV.
Yet Gerard J. Kleisterlee had been in his position as president of the Philips Components group only a year when he was tapped earlier this year to head the $35 billion Dutch electronics titan.
Not only that, but he came out of an unheralded, once minor, part of the Philips empire-leapfrogging executives from the company's consumer-products, lighting, medical-electronics, and semiconductor operations. That's not bad for a 54-year-old German-born engineer who shook up the Philips components group in his year at its helm.
Under Kleisterlee's tenure, Philips Components sold off all its core passives operations, the very namesake businesses that were the heart of the division. He spurred a flat-panel-display joint venture with LG LCD Co., Korea, to catapult Philips from obscurity in the market to become one of the largest global suppliers. (LG.Philips LCD and Samsung trade bragging rights on who's the biggest.)
In November, Kleisterlee helped engineer...