Jim Davidson has played a key role in some of the biggest deals in the technology industry, including investments in Dell, Skype, Go Daddy, Alibaba, Avago, Seagate and Sabre Holdings, which operates Travelocity. For his impressive work in the investment arena, the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University will honor Davidson – co-founder, managing partner and managing director of Silver Lake – with the school’s annual Executive of the Year Award next week.
“Jim Davidson has helped many businesses to strategically invest and grow into market leaders,” says W. P. Carey School of Business Dean Amy Hillman. “He has been an active advisor in the technology industry for more than a quarter of a century and is considered a pioneer in the world of technology investments.”
Davidson co-founded Silver Lake in 1999 and has helped the technology-focused private-equity firm grow to manage more than $23 billion in assets and employ more than 200 professionals around the world. The firm’s portfolio currently includes or has previously included such companies as Alibaba, Ameritrade, Avago, Go Daddy, the NASDAQ OMX Group, Sabre Holdings, Seagate and Skype. The firm was also instrumental in the recent $25 billion deal in which Silver Lake partnered with Michael Dell to take Dell Inc. off stock exchanges to become private again.
Prior to his work at Silver Lake, Davidson was a managing director at Hambrecht & Quist, a technology-focused investment bank and venture capital firm that helped underwrite the initial public offerings (IPOs) of Apple, Netscape and Amazon.com. He was also a corporate securities attorney.
Davidson serves on the board of SMART Modular Technologies, a designer, manufacturer and supplier of flash memory cards and other digital storage products. He has also served on the boards of directors of many other Silver Lake investments, including Avago, Seagate and Skype. He is an active angel investor and advisor to several private tech companies and also serves on the boards of nonprofits, including the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology and the U.S. Olympic Foundation Board of Trustees.
Davidson becomes the 31st annual Executive of the Year chosen by the Dean’s Council, a national group of prominent executives who advise the W. P. Carey School of Business. Previous honorees include Howard Schultz, chairman and chief executive officer of Starbucks Coffee Company; Alan Mulally, president and chief executive officer of Ford Motor Company, and Mike Ahearn, chairman of the board of First Solar, Inc.
Davidson will be honored at a luncheon at the JW Marriott Camelback Inn in Scottsdale on April 17. The event, which starts at 11:45 a.m., is part of the Economic Club of Phoenix speaker series. For more information about the club or to reserve seats, call (480) 727-0596 or visit www.econclubphx.org. Tickets are $75 per person for non-club members.
