Western Digital Corp will buy SanDisk Corp for US$15.8 billion, sticking with plans to combine the makers of memory chips after a potential Chinese investor backed out of another deal amid a national security probe.
Western Digital will pay US$78.50 a share in cash and stock for SanDisk, 16 percent more than Monday’s closing price, according to a statement yesterday.
China’s Tsinghua Unisplendour Corp (紫光) pulled the plug on its US$3.8 billion investment after learning that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US, which can block foreign takeovers of US companies, will investigate the transaction.
The scrapped deal comes amid heightened concern over Chinese investment in US technology firms and the Asian country’s effort to build semiconductor know-how by acquiring US firms.
Chinese investors are undergoing the most CFIUS reviews and their interest in US technology has drawn fire from lawmakers worried about risks to national security.
Canceling the investment, which would have made the Chinese group Western Digital’s largest shareholder, is the latest blow to that country’s attempts to acquire access to US technology as it tries to boost its domestic capabilities and replace exports. Fairchild Semiconductor International Inc decided to go with a takeover proposal from On Semiconductor Corp, passing up a higher offer from a Chinese group on the grounds it might not get US regulator approval.
The scrapped deal would have given Unisplendour, a business unit of China’s prestigious Tsinghua University, a Western Digital board seat.
Unisplendour did not immediately respond to a telephone call and e-mail seeking comment on the announcement.
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