Hitachi Appoints General Manager

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi) today announced the appointment of Pantelis Alexopoulos to the position of vice president and general manager, Head Business Group. Alexopoulos is a 26-year veteran of the hard disk drive industry, whose career has spanned numerous major hard drive vendors and component suppliers in the industry. He will be based at Hitachis Cottle Road site in South San Jose.

In leading Hitachi’s Head Business Group, Alexopoulos will have responsibility for revenue performance, profit and loss, volume growth and cost management for one of five major business groups. The head -- which performs the important task of reading and recording data -- is one of the two key components of the hard drive (the other is the media upon which data is stored). Head technology requires deep understanding and application of nanotechnology, magnetics and metrology, which enable data recording with nanometer precision.

“We are very pleased to add to our executive team the deep-seated experience that Pantelis has accumulated over the past several decades in the hard drive industry,” said Robert Holleran, chief operating officer, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. “We are confident that Pantelis’ direction will extend Hitachi’s head technology leadership, which has brought us the quarter-terabyte 2.5-inch drive and terabyte 3.5-inch drive.”

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST)