Former Elpida Memory Pres. Yukio Sakamoto Dies at 76

Jiji Press

16:01 JST, February 28, 2024

TOKYO (Jiji Press) — Yukio Sakamoto, former president of Elpida Memory Inc., now Micron Memory Japan K.K., died of a heart attack on Feb. 14. He was 76.

Sakamoto became president of Elpida Memory in 2002 after serving as deputy head of the Japanese unit of U.S. semiconductor maker Texas Instruments Inc. He graduated from Nippon Sport Science University in 1970.

Sakamoto worked to rebuild the management of Elpida Memory, which combined the dynamic random access memory operations of NEC Corp., Hitachi Ltd. and Mitsubishi Electric Corp.

But Elpida Memory decided to file for court protection under the corporate rehabilitation law in 2012, after suffering from the dire conditions in the chip market and from the appreciation of the yen in the wake of the global financial crisis triggered by the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers in 2008.

Sakamoto stepped down as president after Elpida Memory became a wholly owned subsidiary of U.S. chipmaker Micron Technology Inc. in 2013. He later served as an executive of a Chinese company.