By Svea Herbst-Bayliss
NEW YORK, May 27 (Reuters) - Chip design software maker Synopsys has reached an agreement with activist investor Elliott Investment Management that will give one board seat to the activist investor's managing partner Jesse Cohn, the company said on Wednesday.
The board is being expanded to 11 members with the appointment of Cohn, who will also join the board's corporate governance and nominating committee, it added.
Synopsys, which has a market valuation of about $100 billion
and counts Tesla and Google parent Alphabet among its customers, has held discussions with Elliott, one of the industry's most powerful activists, for roughly two months.
Elliott pushed the company to improve its margins and Synopsys' stock price has climbed roughly 20% since Elliott's involvement became public. The hedge fund built a multi-billion-dollar investment in the company and initially suggested that it wanted three board seats, sources familiar with the matter said.
Sunnyvale, California-based Synopsys has for decades been one of the main suppliers to Advanced Micro Devices, Nvidia and others of software used in determining how to arrange the tens of billions of transistors that make up semiconductor chips.
Nvidia in December revealed it had invested $2 billion in Synopsys as part of an expanded multi-year tie-up to jointly develop new tools for designing products across industries using Nvidia's AI technology.
Synopsys appointed Sassine Ghazi as CEO in January 2024 and he will announce earnings on Wednesday.
Cohn is a managing partner at Elliott, along with Gordon Singer, who is founder Paul Singer's son. Together, they manage Elliott’s Investment Committee. Cohn has expertise in technology investing and in March 2020 joined the Twitter board. He left the board a year later after having developed a blueprint for changes that led to a doubling of the social media firm's share price before it was bought by Elon Musk and rebranded as X.
"As an experienced board member, Jesse brings a uniquely differentiated perspective," said Aart de Geus, executive chair and founder of Synopsys.
(Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss; Editing by Edmund Klamann)
