Following a report late last month that creditors of bankrupt sapphire supplier GT Advanced Technologies won a court order to get a look at sensitive Apple documents, now GT’s creditors are requesting a deposition of Apple executive Jeff Williams. The Wall Street Journal reports:
In a Monday filing with U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New Hampshire, GT’s official committee of unsecured creditors and a group of bondholders said Apple Senior Vice President of Operations Jeff Williams should be made available for a “short, half-day deposition.”
Williams is Apple’s Senior Vice President of Operations and according to Apple’s bio page “leads a team of people around the world responsible for end-to-end supply chain management”. In their filing requesting the deposition, GTAT’s creditors said “it is clear that Williams played an important, substantial and hands-on role in managing the relationship between GTAT and Apple in connection with the matters that are directly relevant to the Apple settlement motion.”
The request comes as part of GTAT creditors’ probe of what it called an unfair settlement reached between the bankrupt sapphire supplier and Apple that would see GT repay Apple $439 million.
Throughout the bankruptcy case, Apple has said it would maintain its commitment to Mesa, Arizona and work to repurpose the facility it had invested in alongside GT Advanced for sapphire production. Mesa officials indicated in recent interviews that Apple is focused “on preserving jobs in Arizona.”
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Cool. More dirty laundry!
Seems to me that Apple didn’t perform it’s due diligence in this one.
Can’t wait to see how it helps the former employees, as it’s promised to do. Not a great holiday season for them..
Apple did give GT an incredible opportunity at virtually owning the large scale production of sapphire screens.
And GT did fail – most published reports are stating that GT simply could not ramp up its production with any quality. GT simply didn’t have the leadership it needed to advance. It is a shame for all those who worked at GT – they were clearly technical experts that were screwed by their own leadership. And that dude, it seems, may now be investigated for trying to run away with company assets – assets that may have rightfully belonged to creditors and shareholders.
It would have been gravy to have a huge sapphire screen on the iPhone 6, but going with an untested volume producer was a risk to Apple, and they knew it. Despite GT’s failure, the iPhone 6 was on time, under cost, and at amazing quantities. The iPhone 6 is a tremendous hit, and may lead to the death of the Galaxy franchise which is taking an incredible beating in the marketplace.
I’m sure the employees of GT are really pissed off at their leadership for betting the farm at their expense. But they’re still experts – they’ll form new startups and they’ll join other players in the sapphire market. I think the only real failure in this is the CEO of GT and his direct reports that failed to reign him in.