Qimonda Richmond LLC, a US semiconductor-making unit of Infineon Technologies AG, filed for bankruptcy protection from creditors, blaming the drop in global demand for computer chips.
The company, based in Sandston, Virginia, listed more than US$1 billion in both assets and debt in Chapter 11 documents filed on Friday in US Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Delaware. Qimonda North America Corp also filed for bankruptcy on Friday, court papers showed.
Qimonda is an affiliate of Qimonda AG, which is also a unit of Infineon. Qimonda AG, which primarily makes dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, for personal computers, filed for protection from creditors on Jan. 23 in Europe after failing to get sufficient financing following losses on memory-chip prices that have dropped below production costs.
Qimonda Richmond said it was forced to file for bankruptcy after its parent Qimonda AG filed for insolvency. The company said Qimonda AG stopped buying its inventory, resulting in a lack of funds to continue operations, court documents said.
“Toward the end of March 2007, prices for DRAM products fell precipitously,” Qimonda North America chief financial officer Miriam Martinez said in court filings.
The drop was a result of weak seasonal demand, coupled with computer manufacturers stockpiling inventory in anticipation of the release of Microsoft Corp’s Windows Vista operating system.
Average DRAM prices plummeted 85 percent in 2007 and fell an additional 58 percent last year, Martinez said in court papers, citing the market research firm DRAMeXchange.
Qimonda said it plans to “locate a purchaser expeditiously” for substantially all of its assets. The company will finance operations with about US$10.3 million in cash while in bankruptcy, court papers showed.
In related news, Spansion Inc, the money-losing maker of memory chips for mobile phones, said it failed to make an interest payment on US$266 million of bonds, which it now must repay in full.
Spansion first missed a payment on the notes on Jan. 15, and then failed to make good by the 30-day “cure” deadline, the Sunnyvale, California-based company said in a regulatory filing on Friday.
Spansion’s Japanese subsidiary filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this month. The parent company is in talks with holders of US$625 million of bonds due in 2013 about restructuring the debt and a possible sale or merger.
Spansion is the world’s largest producer of NOR flash, once the most common type of memory chip used in mobile phones before handset makers turned to cheaper NAND flash chips manufactured by Samsung Electronics Co and Toshiba Corp.
SETBACK: Apple’s India iPhone push has been disrupted after Foxconn recalled hundreds of Chinese engineers, amid Beijing’s attempts to curb tech transfers Apple Inc assembly partner Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known internationally as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has recalled about 300 Chinese engineers from a factory in India, the latest setback for the iPhone maker’s push to rapidly expand in the country. The extraction of Chinese workers from the factory of Yuzhan Technology (India) Private Ltd, a Hon Hai component unit, in southern Tamil Nadu state, is the second such move in a few months. The company has started flying in Taiwanese engineers to replace staff leaving, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named, as the
The prices of gasoline and diesel at domestic fuel stations are to rise NT$0.1 and NT$0.4 per liter this week respectively, after international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) announced yesterday. Effective today, gasoline prices at CPC and Formosa stations are to rise to NT$27.3, NT$28.8 and NT$30.8 per liter for 92, 95 and 98-octane unleaded gasoline respectively, the companies said in separate statements. The price of premium diesel is to rise to NT$26.2 per liter at CPC stations and NT$26 at Formosa pumps, they said. The announcements came after international crude oil prices
STABLE DEMAND: Delta supplies US clients in the aerospace, defense and machinery segments, and expects second-half sales to be similar to the first half Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) expects its US automation business to remain steady in the second half, with no signs of weakening client demand. With demand from US clients remaining solid, its performance in the second half is expected to be similar to that of the first half, Andy Liu (劉佳容), general manager of the company’s industrial automation business group, said on the sidelines of the Taiwan Automation Intelligence and Robot Show in Taipei on Wednesday. The company earlier reported that revenue from its automation business grew 7 percent year-on-year to NT$27.22 billion (US$889.98 million) in the first half, accounting for 11 percent
A German company is putting used electric vehicle batteries to new use by stacking them into fridge-size units that homes and businesses can use to store their excess solar and wind energy. This week, the company Voltfang — which means “catching volts” — opened its first industrial site in Aachen, Germany, near the Belgian and Dutch borders. With about 100 staff, Voltfang says it is the biggest facility of its kind in Europe in the budding sector of refurbishing lithium-ion batteries. Its CEO David Oudsandji hopes it would help Europe’s biggest economy ween itself off fossil fuels and increasingly rely on climate-friendly renewables. While
RSS