Finance director succession at CSR

Thursday, 28 February 2008 Paul Goodridge, finance director, has decided to step down from the board of Bluetooth firm CSR for personal reasons. His resignation will take effect from 29 February 2008 and h e will be leaving the company on 31 May 2008. CSR designs single-chip wireless devices and is ranked #1 in every Bluetooth market segment with a unit market share in excess of 50 per cent.

The board also announced that Will Gardiner, currently director of finance, technology and enterprise at BSkyB plc, will be joining the board as chief financial officer on 1 July 2008. Gardiner, 43, gained a BA at Harvard College and joined Citibank in their corporate finance division. He then gained an MA at John Hopkins University.

He worked in JP Morgan in its M A Group between 1991 and 2001, before becoming head of its Latin American Telecoms Group and, in 1998, vice president European Telecoms Group. He left in 2001 to become CFO of Easynet Group plc, a pan-European broadband telecoms company. Since its acquisition by BSkyB in 2006 he has been director of finance, technology and enterprise at BSkyB, leading a 100 person team supporting the technology platforms across BSkyB and its enterprise division.

Ron Mackintosh, chairman of CSR (LSE:CSR), said that Goodridge had made an outstanding contribution to CSR since he joined the company in 2000, being a part of the management team that led CSR through its IPO and a period of sustained growth through to the present. Gardiner was in the last five years a director of Easynet Group plc, a post which he no longer holds.