MILANO – Chips that cannot be found due to lack of supplies, a sector that is the protagonist of a wave of possible extraordinary transactions and investments to strengthen and diversify the business. Within hours, important moves (announced or leaked) emerged from Broadcom first and then Samsung.
Let’s start with the announcements. The Samsung group has announced a maxi investment of 365 billion dollars over the next five years, with the aim of expanding its leadership in various sectors, from semiconductors to biotechnology. The project will lead to the creation of 80,000 jobs. Timing is also politically relevant, given that the strong push for the domestic economy comes a few days before the beginning of the president’s five-year term Yoon Suk Yeola big fan of the conglomerates that form the backbone of the country.
The figure communicated by the Korean giant, which alone bills the equivalent of one fifth of the country’s gross domestic product, is over a third higher than what was announced in the plan presented last year. “These investments – explained Samsung in a statement – will lead to long-term growth in strategic activities and strengthen the industrial ecosystem in today’s most important technologies”. Furthermore, with the operation, Samsung aims to accelerate the production of the chips.
Semiconductors and biopharmaceuticals are therefore the sectors on which the giant focuses most. From Samsung Electronics, the world‘s largest manufacturer of smartphones, displays, memory chips and consumer applications, they expect $ 151 billion in investments until 2030 to boost the semiconductor division, which is looking to grow rapidly to compete with Intel and Taiwanese TSM in producing for names such as Nvidia and Qualcomm.
If these are the plans that Samsung has publicly pitched, it was Bloomberg that anticipated those of Broadcom which is in talks to buy VMware for $ 60 billion in stock and cash. The WSJ explained that the acquisition could be announced as early as Thursday. The indiscretion obviously gave wings to VMware stocks, which rose 21% on Wall Street last night, giving the company a market capitalization of 50 billion dollars.
VMware is a US cloud computing company and its acquisition would be one of the big hits of the tech sector. For Broadcom, the US chip giant, the desire to enter a highly specialized sector considered fundamental for the future is evident.