Amgen Inc. said Lowell Sears, its acting...
Amgen Inc. said Lowell Sears, its acting chief financial officer and senior vice president for Asia-Pacific operations, plans to resign March 31.
Sears, 42, said in a statement last week that he was leaving Thousand Oaks-based Amgen, the nation’s leading biotechnology concern, to explore new challenges. Amgen spokesman David Kaye added that Sears also quit because he thought that he was unlikely to become Amgen’s chief executive.
Sears joined Amgen in 1986 and was its chief financial officer full-time between 1988 and 1992, when he assumed the additional responsibility for Amgen’s Pacific Rim business. Amgen expects to name a new chief financial officer in a few months.
Succeeding Sears as head of Amgen’s Pacific Rim operations will be Daryl Hill, 48. A 10-year Amgen veteran, Hill was previously the company’s vice president for quality assurance, a post he had held since 1988.
Plasma & Materials Technologies Inc., a Chatsworth-based supplier to the semiconductor industry, named John A. Rollwagen, former acting deputy secretary of Commerce and chief executive of Cray Research Inc., as chairman of its board of directors.
Rollwagen was nominated by President Clinton last year as Commerce deputy secretary. But after doing the job on an acting basis for five months, Rollwagen concluded that he could better serve industry and government in the private sector.
Prior to being tapped for the Commerce post, Rollwagen served as a trade adviser to former Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush.
Rollwagen headed supercomputer-maker Cray, based in Mendota Heights, Minn., from 1977 to January, 1992. During his tenure, Cray grew from a start-up operation with fewer than 100 employees to a Fortune 500 company with nearly $1 billion in sales.
Rollwagen said he saw similarities between Cray in its early days and Plasma & Materials, especially the latter’s “entrepreneurial culture. You can sense success.”
S. Jesse Stancarone has been appointed vice president and chief information officer of Leslie’s Poolmart. Chatsworth-based Leslie’s sells swimming pool supplies and related products through 158 retail stores in 26 states, including a nationwide mail-order catalogue.
