William Mackenzie to Be Arasor CEO

William Mackenzie, general manager of Arasor International Ltd.'s consumer optics division, will become CEO of the company on June 1. Simon Cao, Arasor's founder, current CEO and executive chairman, will focus on global strategic initiatives, the company announced this week. He will remain executive chairman. Arasor also announced that Parviz Tayebati will leave its board of directors to focus on personal interests. Mackenzie was formerly chief operating officer of Novalux, developer of Necsel (Novalux extended cavity surface-emitting laser) technology. Arasor acquired Novalux in January as part of a joint venture with Chinese telecom ZTE Corp. to commercialize "laser TV" technology, an optoelectronic chip for use in TVs, projectors and smaller screens such as laptops, PDAs and mobile phones (See "Arasor Acquires Novalux"). Australian-based Arasor has a manufacturing facility in Mountain View, Calif., its US headquarters. Previously, Mackenzie was CEO and president of Oxford Semiconductor, vice president of operations and manufacturing for Centillium Communications, a senior director with LSI Logic Corp., and head of operations and customer functions at LSI Logic Corp. Canada Inc. He has a degree in applied physics from the University of Stratchclyde in Scotland and began his career in engineering at Motorola Semiconductors in the UK.