Silicon wafer giant Universal Crystal (6488-TW) The review period for the acquisition of German peer Siltronic will end on next Monday (31st), Bloomberg quoted people familiar with the matter as reporting that Global Crystal held a closed-door meeting with the German government in order to try to pass the customs, but did not achieve breakthrough progress, which means that The German government may let the review period expire immediately, breaking the deal.
Xu Xiulan, chairman of Universal Crystal, and Udo Philipp, Germany’s deputy economic minister, held a closed-door meeting, but did not resolve the government’s concerns, people familiar with the matter said. This bad news caused Shichuang’s stock price in Frankfurt to plummet by 4.7% at one point, and it still fell 2.47% at the end to 112.75 per share. EUR。
This is likely to be Global Crystal’s last chance to get approval from the German economy ministry, which is still reviewing the deal but likely won’t release it until Monday night’s deadline, people familiar with the matter said. Global Crystal and Siltron declined to comment on the report, and a spokesman for the German economy ministry said it was still in the review stage and would not comment further.
Global Crystal bid 5.3 billionDollarThe acquisition of Shichuang must be approved by all necessary authorities on the 31st. If the transaction is completed, Universal Crystal will become the second largest silicon wafer factory in the world.
This transaction has been reviewed and approved by the anti-monopoly authorities of the United States, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, China, etc., leaving Germany as the last obstacle. However, it has been reported that the German Ministry of Economic Affairs intends to let the transaction expire and become invalid, which is equivalent to a veto.
Global Crystal said on Thursday that the merger is only a matter of Germany, and it believes there is still a chance to be approved, and the company has a legitimate option to address all the authorities’ concerns. Global Crystal has previously proposed several supporting measures, including giving the German government special voting rights through “golden shares”, a method to reverse the transaction, or selling some key assets of Shichuang.
The merger of the two companies has attracted market attention because silicon wafers are a key material for semiconductors, and the political situation between Europe, China and Taiwan is relatively tense. This transaction has become the first test following Robert Habeck, the new German economy minister, took office.
The global semiconductor industry is facing increasing headwinds to acquisitions, mainly because governments have made semiconductors a top national security issue, especially the bottleneck that experienced a chronic shortage of chips last year, such as huida (Huida)NVDA-US) to 40 billionDollarThe acquisition of British IC design company ARM (ARM) has been opposed by many countries since its announcement. With little progress, it has been reported that Huida intends to give up.
However, on the other hand, the Chinese competent authorities have conditionally released Super Micro (AMD-US) to acquire Xilnix, removing the last major regulatory hurdle.
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