"There are currently no legal investigations," an Infineon spokesman said.

He was responding to a report in the Sunday newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung which quoted sources close to Infineon's supervisory board as saying the computer chip giant was considering taking legal action against Schumacher, who resiged last week.

The sources said the high level of expenditure for the company's public image campaigns resembled a mild form of corruption.

In a shock announcement last Thursday, Infineon, Europe's second biggest maker of computer chips, said Schumacher, its tough and autocratic 45-year-old chief executive, was quitting with immediate effect.

No reasons for the decision were given.

But sources said Schumacher had been forced out after a hastily called supervisory board meeting rapped him over his strategy and management style.

Schumacher had been in office since April 1999 and his contract had been recently renewed to run until 2007.

But he sparked a great deal of resentment by insisting on outsourcing a number of different activities, and he courted controversy with his outspoken plans to relocate abroad in order to cut Infineon's tax bill.

A report in another Sunday newspaper, Welt am Sonntag, said that Siemens chairman Heinrich von Pierer was behind the ouster of Schumacher. Siemens holds just under 20 percent of Infineon.

SPACE.WIRE