TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - June 27, 2013) - OPEL Technologies Inc. (TSX VENTURE:OPL)(OTCQX:OPELF) ("OPEL" or "the Company") today announces appointments to the Special Strategic Committee (SSC) and its Advisory Board. As announced on June 10, the Company formed the SSC which is chaired by Executive Director, Peter Copetti, and which was given the mandate to evaluate strategic alternatives in relation to the sale or licensing of the Company's proprietary POET platform, to deliver recommendations to the Board, and to carry out any selected transactions to completion as confirmed by the Board.
Mr. Copetti is pleased to announce that Dr. Adam Chowaniec, a director of the Company, has been appointed to serve on the SSC and that Lee Shepherd, Martin Peisl and Geoffrey C. Rogers have been appointed to serve on the SSC's Advisory Board.
Mr. Rogers has over 30 years of experience in high-performance semiconductors, EDA software, and intellectual property licensing. Having earned a BSEE from Cornell University, Mr. Rogers has held key roles with Tensilica (now Cadence Design Systems, Inc. - NASDAQ: CDNS), Silicon Architects (now Synopsys, Inc. - NASDAQ: SNPS), VLSI Technology (became Philips Semiconductor) and Applied Micro Circuits Corp. - NASDAQ: AMCC.
Dr. Martin Peisl has over 33 years of management experience in Semiconductor research, development and marketing. He has served companies such as Siemens, Infineon, Qimonda, Ramaxel, and Netlist. His people and project management background includes broad international experience in Germany, Malaysia, France, China and the U.S. Dr. Peisl was directly responsible for product development of Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) generations from 64Mbit to 1Gbit. Additionally, he has supervised starting new product lines such as Mobile Random Access Memory, Reduced Latency DRAM and DRAM based Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICS). Being a decade long member of the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (JEDEC) standardization committee, Dr. Peisl has chaired the development of the predecessor of the Double Data Rate 2 (DDR2) specification within the Advanced DRAM Technology (ADT) consortium together with technical members of Intel, Samsung, Hynix, Micron and Elpida.
"Messrs. Peisl and Rogers will be valuable members of the SSC Advisory Board" stated Mr. Copetti "and I look forward to working with them along with Dr. Chowaniec and Lee Shepherd, VP of Technology."
The directors have accepted the recommendations of the Compensation Committee and granted, to Messrs. Peisl, Rogers, Chowaniec and Shepherd, incentive stock options to purchase an aggregate of 1,200,000 common shares, representing 0.9% of the outstanding shares of the Company. The stock options are exercisable at a price per share of CA$0.46 and expire on June 27, 2018. The exercise price was the closing price on the day prior to the grant, being June 26, 2013.
Prior to the option grant, there were 18,224,000 options outstanding and 132,474,865 voting shares outstanding. The Company's Stock Plan provides for a vesting schedule of 25% upon grant and 25% every six months thereafter, subject to modification by the directors based on performance. These options were granted subject to provisions of the Company's stock option plan which was approved by shareholders at the annual and special shareholders meeting on June 21, 2013, and are subject to the TSX Venture Exchange policies and the applicable securities laws.
About OPEL Technologies Inc.
OPEL is the developer of the POET platform for monolithic fabrication of integrated circuit devices containing both electronic and optical elements on a single semiconductor wafer. With head office in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and operations in Storrs, CT, the Company, through ODIS Inc., a U.S. company, designs III-V semiconductor devices for military, industrial and commercial applications, including infrared sensor arrays and ultra-low-power random access memory; and through OPEL Solar, Inc., provided systems for energy applications. The Company has 32 patents issued and 6 patents pending, primarily for its semiconductor POET process, which enables the monolithic fabrication of integrated circuits containing both electronic and optical elements, with potential high speed and power-efficient applications in devices such as servers, tablet computers and smartphones. OPEL's common shares trade on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol "OPL" and on the OTCQX under the symbol "OPELF". For more information please visit our websites at www.opeltechinc.com and for ODIS at www.odisinc.com .
ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Michel Lafrance, Secretary
Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
