CAREER

Challenge

Physicist and SanDisk founder, Eli Harari, has changed your life. He pioneered flash memory, the technology that makes your camera cards capture your memories; the technology that makes your smartphone and iPad work; the technology that stores data on the cloud. 

Carmine began working with the SanDisk CEO and Harari’s executive team in 2008. The company was facing an existential crisis. The global financial meltdown had triggered the worst recession since the 1930s. As demand for flash-enabled consumer products plummeted, the industry faced a massive oversupply problem. Prices tanked, as did SanDisk’s stock, which plunged 90 percent over the course of a year. 

In August 2008, a competitor, Samsung, launched an unsolicited bid to purchase SanDisk for a 50 percent premium, or $10 billion. Mutual fund managers who owned a large percentage of stock pressed Harari to make the deal. But Harari believed the offer wasn’t in the best interest of the company’s shareholders, partners, and customers. When he turned down the offer of $26 a share, a popular television business personality put a picture of Harari on a “wall of shame” for rejecting the sale. “They don’t understand our story,” Harari told Carmine.