US chipmaker SanDisk Corp hired a bank to explore a potential sale of the business and has received interest from two of its rivals, people with knowledge of the matter said.
Micron Technology Inc and Western Digital Corp are in talks with SanDisk about a possible acquisition, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the process is private.
SanDisk, based in Milpitas, California, operates flash-memory plants with Toshiba Corp in Japan, and would likely need Toshiba’s blessing for a deal.
No decision has been made and talks with the companies might not result in a transaction, the people said.
SanDisk is one of the largest makers of flash memory, a type of chip that is used as storage in mobile devices and increasingly in computers and data centers.
The company and Micron compete with the larger Samsung Electronics Co, while Western Digital, which makes hard drives based on spinning magnetic disks, might want to add a source of flash-memory chips to keep future products competitive.
This year to date has been the biggest ever for semiconductor mergers and acquisitions. Companies in the US$300 billion industry are facing rising costs and a shrinking customer base, encouraging them to get together to add scale.
Last month Western Digital got a US$3.8 billion investment from China’s Tsinghua University, adding to its funds available to make deals.
Tsinghua Unigroup Ltd (清華紫光), an investment arm of Tsinghua University, has made its latest acquisition on the road to becoming a global semiconductor powerhouse: Taiwanese industry veteran Charles Kau (高啟全).
Kau, chairman of a joint venture between Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) and Micron, brings decades of chip industry experience to Tsinghua as the company seeks partners to produce semiconductors in China.
“We have cooperation with Micron on the business level,” Unigroup chairman Zhao Weiguo (趙偉國) said in an interview on Sunday, declining to elaborate on the nature of the cooperation. “We’d like to conduct business by cooperating with current memory giants, by setting up JV [joint venture] plants in China.”
Kau is to remain as a director and keep his position as chairman of Inotera Technologies Inc (華亞科技), the venture between Nanya and Micron, Zhao said.
The 62-year-old Kau would act as one of three global executive vice presidents and have responsibility for the memory business, Zhao said.
“We hope to enter the memory-chip manufacturing business. The market is big and we are optimistic,” Zhao said. “The DRAM market has limited growth and it even saw a declining trend. We’re more interested in flash memory.”
However, the company has no plans to buy Intel Corp’s Dalian factory, nor acquire SanDisk, Toshiba or SK Hynix Inc, Zhao said.
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