Robin Saxby
| Sir Robin Saxby | |
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Robin Saxby in 2015, portrait via the Royal Society
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| Born | Robin Keith Saxby 4 February 1947 Chesterfield, Derbyshire |
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| Alma mater | University of Liverpool (BEng) |
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| Spouse | Patricia Bell (m. 1970) |
Sir Robin Keith Saxby (born 4 February 1947)FREngFRS is an engineer who was Chief Executive and then Chairman of ARM Holdings which he built to become a dominant supplier of embedded systems.
Saxby was born in 1947 in Derbyshire and was educated at Chesterfield Grammar School, a boys' grammar school. He attended the University of Liverpool, where he gained a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Electronics in 1968.
Saxby had an electronics kit at the age of eight and a television repair business at the age of 14. Reflecting on this in 2006, he considered himself "destined for the electronics industry". He worked at Rank Bush Murphy, Pye, Motorola and Henderson Security. Immediately prior to his appointment at ARM, he worked at European Silicon Structures.
In 1991 he joined Cambridge-based ARM as their first Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and built it to "a global giant" with offices round the world. He was Chief Executive from 1991-2001, and subsequently Chairman from 2001-2006. It was at ARM that he made his real impact on the electronic industry. When he was appointed CEO in 1991 he took 12 engineers from Acorn Computers into the newly formed joint venture between Acorn and Apple Inc. With a limited budget of a $1.5m investment from Apple he made those 12 engineers into one of the most formidable management teams in the industry. In a memorable early meeting he persuaded one of the engineers to volunteer to become the Vice president (VP) marketing, another the VP sales and so on. Saxby also introduced the licensing model for selling microprocessors which led to a 95% market share in the mobile phone sector. With a similar success in other sectors he has made ARM into the world's most successful processor company with over 50bn units shipped to date. During his 10 years as CEO he made ARM the most valuable company in the Cambridge cluster with a market capitalisation of over $10bn. ARM under his leadership became a global company with offices in many countries and licences taken by all significant semiconductor companies in the world. This is a unique achievement for a British company, especially in electronics.
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