Qualcomm Inc said its board will convene to discuss the next steps on Broadcom Ltd’s US$121 billion acquisition offer after a meeting with its hostile suitor on Wednesday, giving no indication of whether the two chipmakers are closer to agreeing on the largest deal in the history of technology.
“We met with representatives of Broadcom for two hours earlier today, and listened carefully to what they had to say,” Qualcomm said in a statement after the meeting in New York. “The Qualcomm board will promptly meet to discuss the meeting and to determine next steps.”
While Qualcomm’s representatives listened, they did not engage with their counterparts, according to a person familiar with Broadcom’s view of how the meeting went.
Photo: AFP
Last week, Qualcomm’s board rejected Broadcom’s “best and final” proposal of US$82 a share, which San Diego-based Qualcomm has dismissed as too low. The company had agreed to meet with Broadcom chief executive officer Hock Tan (陳福陽), but warned that he would need to offer more and give better assurances that a transaction would get regulatory approval in a reasonable time frame. Tan replied that the newest bid was as high as he was going to go.
The two sides face a showdown at a March 6 shareholder meeting, where Broadcom is asking Qualcomm investors to elect its board nominees in order to force the deal through.
A failure to win over either Qualcomm’s board or shareholders would be a rare setback for Tan. He has already made Broadcom into one of the largest companies in the US$380 billion semiconductor industry through a string of deals. Taking control of Qualcomm, the biggest maker of chips that power smartphones, would give his company an unprecedented reach in the components that run modern communications systems.
Qualcomm’s board includes chairman Paul Jacobs — the son of the company’s founder — and CEO Steve Mollenkopf, who are both engineers committed to taking market-leading mobile chip technology into new areas such as servers, personal computers and automobiles. Tan has dismissed such expansion plans as unrealistic, arguing that the industry has changed and slowed down.
At the meeting, Tan was not given the chance to appeal to the whole of Qualcomm’s board. The target company was represented by Tom Horton, Jacobs and Mollenkopf from the board, and three others from the leadership team. Only Horton is an independent; the rest are long-serving executives, or, in Jacobs’s case, a former executive, who are committed to Qualcomm’s current strategy and plan to remain a standalone company.
Still, Qualcomm’s contention that the chipmaker’s future is brighter on its own has been a tough sell over the past two years. Challenges to the lucrative technology-licensing business have been at the center of its problems.
Regulators around the world are fining or investigating Qualcomm, supporting elements of Apple Inc.’s claims in a lawsuit alleging Qualcomm abuses its dominant position in mobile chips. Qualcomm has countered that it expects to win in court over time and overturn some of the more than US$4 billion it has been fined.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”