Which is why when one company does well, inside of a sector which is having difficulty, one should investigate. What's the secret?

Dialog Semiconductor seems to be totally bucking the industry trend. They announced their 2008 results on the 25 February, and results they were. With $161.8 million revenue, they achieved 86% growth over 2007 figures. Net profitability, cash and quarterly gross margin were all up, up and away.

What's responsible for the rise and rise of the Swindon-based company? Look no further than Jalal Bagherli, the CEO who joined the firm in September 2005.

Jalal is an interesting animal, and the UK is very fortunate to have this global leader (who is reportedly very well-liked by the Japanese). While the rest of us were dealing with the tech bust in the early years of the 21st century, Jalal joined chip firm Alphamosaic as its first CEO very early on in the company's development, and led it to a successful exit in a $120 million sale to Broadcom in 2004. Not bad for three years' worth of work in a downturn.

He then joined Apax-backed listed Dialog Semiconductor in September 2005. It's safe to say that the money had been made by the investors, and the company had reached a plateau. Dialog was in need of reinventing itself by the time Jalal showed up. The years of 2005 through 2007 were years of peeling away the onion to get to the heart of what would make Dialog a great company. Jalal made management changes and made two new key Board hires - the former CTO of  Vodafone, Chris Burke, and former Telefonica Board Member Russ Shaw, who both joined in July 2006.

Dialog make silicon for mobile devices. Its client base includes Sony-Ericsson, Apple, Bosch and Tridonic  ATCO. The company is a power management specialist, which makes it a hot green company too. Its solutions power longer battery life in smart phones and media players, and enable video on phones.

The UK does semiconductors well. Cambridge Silicon Radio, Alphamosaic and Element 14 (also sold to Broadcom) are all UK success stories. But very few businesspeople have the versatility to lead both entrepreneurs in a start-up as well as take the helm of an established company which has lost its way and lead both to achieve their potential. Jalal has proven with this set of results that he is one of, if not the, leading UK semiconductor executive to watch, and that Dialog Semiconductor is going to be a leading indicator of the growth in the next wave of the technology industry, which is based less on the PC and more on new form factors like notebooks,  smart phones and in-car devices - all of which Dialog powers.