[NTD News on August 13, 2021, Beijing time]On August 13, the US chip company iDEAL stated that Nexperia, a subsidiary of Wingtech in China, acquired the largest British chip manufacturer Newport in July. After the Newport Wafer Fab, their cooperation with the British factory came to an abrupt end.
iDEAL said that before the Newport fab was acquired by Nexperia, the company had been processing silicon wafers in the UK, but since last month the UK factory has unilaterally ceased its cooperation. Mark Granahan, the CEO of iDEAL, told CNBC that after the British factory stopped iDEAL’s wafer processing, his company is still “racing against time” to find a suitable processing location.
In this regard, Anshi Semiconductor did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Anshi Semiconductor is wholly-owned by Shanghai Wingtech Technology Co., Ltd., and nearly 30% of the shares of Wingtech Technology are owned by people with official backgrounds of the Chinese Communist Party. The company is a supplier of Chinese smartphone companies such as Huawei.
Mike Burns, chairman of iDEAL, said that in general, factories usually give “a little running time” and tell customers how many wafers they can process when the acquisition occurs. Such notification “usually is based on Measured by month, quarter or year, rather than ending suddenly.”
IDEAL executives said that the Newport Wafer Manufacturing Company only notified them by phone that the relationship between the two parties had ended.
Chip makers are being acquired by Chinese investors, controversial
Nexperia’s acquisition of the Newport Wafer Manufacturing Company coincided with the decline in US-China relations, and Washington vigorously imposed sanctions on Beijing in the chip (semiconductor) industry, so it was particularly noticeable.
The sale of the Newport Wafer Manufacturing Company was initially approved by the British Secretary of Commerce Kwasi Kwarteng, but Prime Minister Boris Johnson subsequently ordered the National Security Adviser Stephen Love Stephen Lovegrove conducted a review and did not rule out the possibility of rescinding the transaction. It is expected that the British government will make a ruling in the next few weeks.
The report pointed out that the British government may require Nexperia to sell British chip factories. If this happens, Ron Black, a veteran of the British chip industry and former CEO of Imagination Technologies, who designed chips for Apple, admits that he has participated in a consortium. , Intends to buy back the largest chip factory in the UK from Chinese investors.
At the same time, antitrust regulators are also investigating whether to allow California chip giant Nvidia to acquire British chip designer Arm from Japan’s SoftBank. The deal is US$40 billion.
Dutch data consulting agency Datenna said that China is clearly behind other countries in chip technology, but it is trying to stimulate the industry through foreign acquisitions and government-managed investment funds. For the past ten years, Beijing has been snapping up shares of European chip companies through state-owned companies and placing the chip industry at the core of its industrial strategy.
(Reporter Chen Beichen compiled and reported/responsible editor: Lin Qing)
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