NXP Semiconductors on Sunday said that it would buy a smaller peer, Freescale Semiconductor, in an US$11.8 billion deal that would create a big maker of chips for industries as varied as automobiles and mobile payment services.
The merger is also expected to offer some relief to the private equity firms that bought Freescale at the height of the leveraged buyout boom, only to see the financial crisis bring the company low.
A combination would help the two chip manufacturers in their dealings with customers like automobile companies and mobile device manufacturers that are looking to consolidate their suppliers.
In fall 2013, Applied Materials Inc, a US manufacturer of chipmaking equipment, acquired Japanese rival Tokyo Electron Ltd for more than US$9 billion. Other semiconductor companies, like Qualcomm Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, have also struck deals, in part to gain greater negotiating leverage.
NXP and Freescale have also benefited from a recent boom, as companies of all stripes look to add networking capabilities to their products. NXP in particular has had a surge in demand for near-field communications technology that lets mobile phones interact wirelessly with equipment such as payment terminals.
Together, NXP, which has its headquarters in the Netherlands, and Freescale, which is based in Austin, Texas, reported US$10.6 billion in sales last year.
“The combination of NXP and Freescale creates an industry powerhouse focused on the high-growth opportunities in the smarter world,” NXP chief executive Richard Clemmer said in a statement. “We fully expect to continue to significantly outgrow the overall market, drive world-class profitability and generate even more cash, which taken together will maximize value for both Freescale and NXP shareholders.”
Under the deal’s terms, NXP is to pay US$6.25 a share in cash and 0.3521 of one of its shares for each Freescale share held. That values Freescale at about its existing market capitalization.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained