VECO Corporation was an Alaska-based oil pipeline service and construction company until its purchase in September 2007 by CH2M HILL. As of that date, the VECO Corporation ceased to exist. Founded in 1968, the company grew to become a major player in the Alaskan oil industries' support. VECO also was a worldwide player in the oil industry, having divisions in many major oil markets.
On March 24, 1989, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef, spilling eleven million gallons of crude oil into the waters of Prince William Sound. The Exxon Valdez oil spill was the largest in United States history.
VECO was responsible for large parts of the spill's clean up, hiring 2,500 workers to clean up the environmental disaster.

Veeco Instruments Inc. (Veeco) designs, manufactures, markets and services enabling solutions for customers in the high brightness light emitting diode (HB LED), solar, data storage, scientific research, semiconductor and industrial markets. In its LED and Solar segment, Veeco designs and manufactures metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) systems that are used to make HB LEDs or solar cells made of III-V compound semiconductors. In its Data Storage segment, Veeco designs and manufactures equipment used in the production of thin film magnetic heads (TFMHs) that read and write data on hard disk drives. In its Metrology segment, the Company designs and manufactures atomic force microscopes (AFMs), scanning probe microscopes (SPMs), stylus profilers and fast three-dimensional (3D) optical microscopes, used to provide critical surface measurements in research and production environments. In October 2010, Bruker Corporation acquired Atomic Force Microscopy and the Optical Industrial Metrology instruments businesses from the Company.
LED and Solar process equipment
LED and Solar Process Equipment segment consists of metal organic chemical vapor deposition, molecular beam epitaxy systems (MBE), and Web and glass coaters for flexible solar cells. MOCVD production systems are used to make GaN-based devices, (green and blue HB LEDs) and As/P-based devices (red, orange and yellow HB LEDs), which are used in television and laptop backlighting, general illumination, large area signage and specialty illumination. The Company’s As/P MOCVD Systems also are used to make concentrator solar cells. MBE is the process of precisely depositing epitaxially aligned atomically thin crystal layers, or epilayers, of elemental materials onto a substrate in an ultra-high vacuum environment.
Data storage process equipment
Data storage process equipment includes ion beam deposition (IBD) systems, ion beam etch (IBE) systems, physical vapor deposition (PVD) systems, diamond-like carbon (DLC) deposition systems, chemical vapor deposition (CVD) systems and precision lapping, slicing and dicing systems. The Company’s NEXUS IBD systems utilize ion beam technology to deposit precise layers of thin films and may be included on its cluster system platform to allow either parallel or sequential etch/deposition processes. IBD systems deposit high purity thin film layers and provide uniformity and repeatability. In addition to IBD systems, the Company provides a range of ion beam sources.
The Company’s NEXUS IBE systems, which etch precise, features for use primarily by data storage and telecommunications device manufacturers in the fabrication of discrete and integrated microelectronic devices. The Company’s NEXUS PVD systems offer manufacturers a deposition platform for developing data storage applications. The Company’s DLC deposition systems deposit protective coatings on advanced thin film magnetic heads (TFMHs). The Company’s NEXUS CVD systems deposit conformal films for advanced TFMH applications. The Company’s Optium products are used in back-end applications in a data storage fab, where TFMHs or sliders are fabricated. The Company also manufactures instruments that slice and dice wafers into rowbars and TFMHs.
Metrology
The Company’s metrology product line includes atomic force/scanning probe microscopes, optical metrology tools and stylus profilers for a range of applications in research and industry. The Company’s has a product portfolio of research atomic force microscopes (AFMs) and scanning probe microscope (SPMs) used in nano-scale materials research in HB LED, solar, biological and nanotechnology applications. Veeco’s NanoScope and Dimension products are used by universities and corporate research centers worldwide. Veeco also produces a range of automated AFM/SPM products designed for data storage, semiconductor and research and other industrial applications.
Stylus profilers are used to produce cross-sectional representations and/or quantitative measurements, which are displayed on a video monitor. The Company’s Dektak stylus profiler systems utilize a precision translation stage, which creates relative motion between the sample and a diamond tipped stylus. Stylus profilers are used for height, width, pitch and roughness measurements of features on semiconductor devices, magnetic and optical storage media (such as hard drives), flat panel displays and hybrid circuits. The Company’s optical metrology instruments are designed to make non-contact surface measurements using either interferometry or a spinning disc confocal architecture. The Company’s White-Light Interometers creates interference patterns from the optical path difference between the test surface and a reference surface.
The Company competes with Aixtron, Anelva, Applied Materials, Centrotherm, Nippon Sanso, Oerlikon, Riber, Agilent, Hitachi, KLA-Tencor, Seiko and Zygo.

VECO's Ex CEO, Bill Allen, paid for the publishing of the "Voice of the Times," a half page counterpoint to the Anchorage Daily News which was published within the pages of the latter. The Voice of the Times is what remains of the Anchorage Times, a newspaper which went out of business due to competition from the Anchorage Daily News in 1992.
In accordance with an agreement reached between the former editors of the Anchorage Times and the Anchorage Daily News, space was provided for the Times' editors to provide a counterpoint to the Anchorage Daily News. From 1992 until 2002, the Anchorage Daily News provided this space for free. In 2002 the agreement was renewed for five years, but the "Voice of the Times" was required to pay for the space as though it was advertising.
On May 9, 2007 the Anchorage Daily News announced it would end the arrangement at months end, and it would cease publishing the Voice of the Times. Although ADN publisher Mike Sexton said the decision had been made a week prior, he was quoted a few days before this announcement as saying the situation was still under review.The Voice of the Times now exists as a blog.

On July 24, 2007, the Wall Street Journal reported that Representative Don Young was under federal investigation for possibly taking bribes, illegal gratuities or unreported gifts from VECO. Between 1996 and 2006, Young received $157,000 from VECO employees and its political action committee. In the first half of 2007, Young spent more than $250,000 of campaign contributions for legal fees.
Alaska State House representatives Pete Kott, Bruce Weyhrauch and Vic Kohring were all charged with federal crimes as part of the investigation into VECO.
On May 29, 2007, the Anchorage Daily News reported that the FBI and a federal grand jury were investigating an "extensive" remodeling project at Senator Ted Stevens' home in Girdwood, Alaska. The remodeling work, organized by VECO, more than doubled the size of the home (public records show that the home is now 2,471 square feet (229.6 m2) and valued at about $441,000).The repairs could have cost anywhere between $130,000 and 250,000, and the payments Ted Stevens paid were about $160,000. Stevens' Alaska home was raided by the FBI and IRS on July 30, 2007. Stevens was indicted by a federal grand jury on July 29, 2008 on seven counts alleging that Stevens received hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts that he did not declare on his US Senate financial disclosure forms. Stevens was convicted on all seven of these charges on October 27, 2008. All the convictions were vacated on April 7, 2009 due to gross prosecutorial misconduct.


OVERALL
Beta: 2.46
Market Cap (Mil.): $2,102.96
Shares Outstanding (Mil.): 40.74
Annual Dividend: --
Yield (%): --
FINANCIALS
VECO.O Industry Sector
P/E (TTM): 7.49 29.29 21.01
EPS (TTM): 910.99 -- --
ROI: 43.16 6.09 16.02
ROE: 47.02 6.30 17.63

Name Age Since Current Position
Edward Braun 71 2007 Chairman of the Board
John Peeler 56 2007 Chief Executive Officer, Director
David Glass 51 2010 Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President
Robert Oates 57 2009 Executive Vice President - Data Storage
William Miller 42 2010 Executive Vice President - Compound Semiconductor
John Kiernan 49 2005 Senior Vice President - Finance, Chief Accounting Officer, Corporate Controller
Peter Collingwood 51 2009 Senior Vice President - Worldwide Sales and Service
Richard D'Amore 57 1990 Independent Director
Joel Elftmann 71 1994 Independent Director
Roger McDaniel 72 2010 Presiding Independent Director
Peter Simone 63 2004 Independent Director
Gordon Hunter 59 2010 Independent Director
Thomas Gutierrez 62 2010 Independent Director

COMPANY ADDRESS
Veeco Instruments Inc
Terminal Drive
Plainview
New York NY 11803
 
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