SunPower appoints Wendell Laidley as CFO

SunPower (SPWR) hired Wendell Laidley as CFO, reporting to CEO T.J. Rodgers. Rodgers said, “Wendell Laidley, started his career in San Francisco, in equity research and worked his way up to VP at the Deutsche Bank Technology group run by Silicon Valley’s legendary Frank Quattrone – the banker who took my company, Cypress Semiconductor, public. Wendell followed Quattrone’s group to Credit Suisse where he was named to the Institutional Investor’s All-America Research Team several times during his 1998-2002 tenure. He then became a stock portfolio manager in software for RS Investments, a spinout of San Francisco’s Robertson-Stephens Investment Bank – the other bank that took Cypress public. After a detour to found and profitably run Napa’s Realm Cellar Winery, he became the VP Finance for AppDynamics, a SaaS company for which he raised $278 million, followed by a similar stint at Big Switch Networks, both of which were acquired. His final Silicon Valley company was Life360, a family-oriented B2C consumer software company that he took public.”