The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) yesterday said it was suspending its review of Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc’s (ASE, 日月光半導體) bid to take over rival Siliconware Precision Industries Co (SPIL, 矽品精密) because the deal has fallen through.
The commission’s decision meant a victory for SPIL in the high-profile ownership battle, as ASE is now barred from launching a new round of tender offers to fully acquire SPIL within a year as the Company Act (公司法) stipulates.
However, ASE, the world’s largest chip packaging and testing services provider, is not likely to give up so soon.
ASE released a statement saying it will continue with our plan to acquire 100 percent equity interest in SPIL through all legally permissible means and avenues.”
The industrial consolidation will help the company cope with “intense and constant changes in the global semiconductor industry, as well as to ensure the sustained development of the Taiwanese semiconductor packaging and testing supply chain,” it said.
The FTC said in a statement that as “ASE’s tender offer has expired on March 17, there is no chance that the merger will happen. As a result, the commission will stop reviewing the case.”
ASE’s acquisition of a major stake in SPIL has raised anti-trust concerns and fears that the merger would undermine competition in the market.
The FTC on March 16, one day before the March 17 expiry date, said that the deal was complicated, and that before clarifying certain issues related to the potential merger, it could not decide whether it would approve the deal.
The FTC’s announcement essentially meant that the deal could not be completed.
On March 17, ASE said formally that the tender offer could not go through.
The commission’s approval is one of the deciding factors for ASE to clinch the NT$42.35 billion (US$1.3 billion) deal, along with a minimal purchase threshold of 5 percent of 770 million proposed SPIL shares.
The transaction, if approved, would help ASE expand its holding to 49 percent from the current 25 percent and pave the way for a full acquisition.
“We deeply regret and are extremely baffled by the FTC’s decision, which is completely without legal basis and violates the FTC’s own administrative precedents,” ASE said in the statement.
SPIL, which has repeatedly urged the commission to terminate the review of the acquisition deal since March 16, welcomed the FTC’s decision.
NXP Semiconductors NV expects its first automotive-grade 5-nanometer chip built by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to become available for automakers within one-and-a-half years at the earliest, following demand for better computing performance and energy efficiency for connected vehicles, a company executive said yesterday. That would mean a significant upgrade from the 16-nanometer technology NXP adopted in its existing series of microprocessors. NXP chief technology executive Lars Reger made the remarks during a media briefing yesterday in Taipei. The latest updates came after NXP unveiled its plan to source 5-nanometer capacity from TSMC in 2021. This is Reger’s first trip to
EVADING US CONTROLS? ‘These surveillance chips are relatively easy to manufacture compared to smartphone processors,’ a source said about HiSilicon’s components A Huawei Technologies Co (華為) unit is shipping new Chinese-made chips for surveillance cameras in a fresh sign that the Chinese tech giant is finding ways around four years of US export controls, two sources briefed on the unit’s efforts said. The shipments to surveillance camera manufacturers from the company’s chip design unit, HiSilicon Technologies Co (海思半導體), started this year, said one of the sources and a third source familiar with the industry supply chain. One of the sources briefed on the unit said that at least some of the customers were Chinese. Huawei unveiled new smartphones in the past few weeks that
CENTRAL BANK: The consumer price index would grow while core CPI is set to move forward at a milder rate, the governor said, adding that the GDP forecast is down The central bank yesterday kept its policy rate unchanged for the second straight quarter, saying that a rate pause would help support the economy, as consumer prices have moderated and would return to the 2 percent target next year. “The board gave unanimous support to a policy hold, although some members voiced concern over lingering inflationary pressures and called for close monitoring,” central bank Governor Yang Chin-long (楊金龍) told a media briefing after its quarterly board meeting. The consumer price index (CPI) would grow 1.83 percent next year, while core CPI after stripping out volatile items would advance a milder 1.73 percent,
SLUMP: The electronics, machinery and traditional industries posted the largest decline in the past year; overall, sectors showed gains over the previous month Taiwan’s industrial production index decreased 10.53 percent year-on-year to 91.38 last month, falling for a 15th consecutive month on an annual basis, as weak global economic growth continued to weigh on end-market demand and investment momentum, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said on Saturday. The industrial production index gauges output in Taiwan’s four main industries: manufacturing, electricity and gas supply, water supply, and mining and quarrying. Last month’s decline was the smallest contraction since March when the index dropped 16.03 percent from a year earlier. On a monthly basis, the index rose 7.28 percent, marking a second straight month of improvement,
RSS