Executive Vice President, Business Development
Member of Board of Management
"My goal is to build on our leadership positions through the development of key business strategies in our focus market areas"
Theo Claasen is Executive Vice President and responsible for Business Development for NXP, the newly independent semiconductor company founded by Philips.
This includes the corporate strategy, Emerging Semiconductors Business Unit and M&A activities. In that respect, Theo is responsible for identifying and developing strategic opportunities that will contribute to the companys global competitiveness and ensure its position as a leading semiconductor supplier. In this role, he is a member of the NXP Board of Management and executive management team (EMT), headed by Frans van Houten.
Theo has been instrumental in shaping the strategic direction of NXP, setting out the strategic focus on the Connected Consumer market and working to bring effective semiconductor system solutions to market by building on the success of the Nexperia™ portfolio across the companys four business units. Theo has also actively participated in the Lion project that established the disentanglement of the company from Philips and selected the new corporate ownership.
Previously, Theo held the position of Executive Vice President and Manager of strategy and business development for Philips Semiconductors. Theo first joined Philips in 1971, working on CAD for non-linear analogue circuits and later on digital signal processing theory for Philips Research. From 1983, he held various managerial positions at Philips Research Laboratories in Eindhoven, the Netherlands before becoming CTO of Philips Semiconductors in 1997. In that role he was responsible for the development of the Nexperia™ platform concept and for setting up the Crolles2 alliance for advanced processes.
Theo holds a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Technology, Eindhoven, and a Ph.D., which he obtained at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. He is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).