Rafael Torres CFO, OCZ

OCZ Technology Group, Inc. announced the appointment of Rafael Torres as CFO, reporting to Ralph Schmitt, CEO, effective immediately.

 Torres, 45, joins OCZ with over 15 years of experience as a senior leader in finance and over 10 years serving as CFO. He replaces Arthur Knapp, 64, who is leaving the company to begin his retirement.

"We are very excited that Rafael has joined our team as CFO and believe that his proven track record in all aspects of financial management will provide immediate benefits to our company," said Schmitt. "We also would like to take this opportunity to thank Art Knapp for his nine years of service to OCZ as CFO and wish him the very best in his retirement. Art helped build OCZ to be a leading provider of solid-state storage and power management solutions, and will continue to assist us as we complete our restatement. He played a critical role in first identifying and then rectifying the problems surrounding our recent financial reporting."

"I enjoyed being involved with a very talented team who built a multi hundred million dollar SSD business basically from scratch," stated Knapp. "While we uncovered some issues in recent times, with achievements such as the recent financing, I feel that we have made significant progress to put the company back on the right path. Rafael will inherit a good business, with clean financials, to use as a base to build a profitable business."

Prior to joining OCZ, Torres served as CFO and VP of Finance for Capella Photonics where he raised new capital and developed a financial infrastructure to support a growing start-up. Before joining Capella, Torres was the CFO and VP of Finance for Power Integrations where he led a financial turnaround that he achieved. Prior to that, he was CFO and VP of Finance for PLX Technology and through his leadership, returned the company to profitability and increased their cash position.

"I am very excited to join OCZ at this time of its evolution being highly regarded for its technological advances and extensive portfolio of award-winning client and enterprise SSDs and power supply units," said Torres. "My skill set and experience in strategic business planning, risk management, SEC reporting, treasury operations, accounting and tax management are an ideal fit for helping make an immediate contribution to the success of the company moving forward."

Torres holds a Bachelors of Science degree in Accounting from Santa Clara University and is a Certified Public Accountant.