清华控股出资230亿美元欲收购美国美光科技（Micron Technology）

来源: 笨狼于 2015-07-13 21:55:44 [档案] [博客] [旧帖] [给我悄悄话] 本文已被阅读：次 (6924 bytes)

美光科技（Micron Technology）目前是全球最大的记忆体存储与影像感测器生产商之一。主要产品包括DRAM、NAND快闪记忆体和CMOS影像感测器，其它半导体元件和记忆体模组。

美光科技一直不景气，清华控股出的价是估价+20%。能否被美国政府批准，还难说。

华尔街日报报道：

State-Owned Chinese Chip Maker Tsinghua Unigroup Makes $23 Billion Bid for Micron
If it goes through, deal would be biggest Chinese takeover of a U.S. company

A Chinese state-owned company has prepared a $23 billion bid to buy U.S. memory chip maker Micron Technology Inc., people familiar with the matter said, in what could be the largest foreign takeover by a Chinese firm.

Tsinghua Unigroup Ltd., China’s largest chip design company, is willing to pay $21 a share for Micron, a 19.3% premium over its Monday closing price, one of the people said. Shares of Nasdaq-listed Micron have fallen by nearly half in the past year. They closed at $17.61 on Monday.

A letter outlining Tsinghua’s bid has been presented to Micron, one of the people said.

A Micron spokesman said the Boise, Idaho, company hasn’t received a buyout offer and declined further comment.

Any deal would likely face close scrutiny by U.S. officials in Washington. One question is whether it would be reviewed by the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States, a panel of representatives from more than a dozen departments and agencies across the U.S. government.

CFIUS, as the group is known, is charged with determining whether any foreign acquisitions or investments pose a security threat. But the process for determining whether a transaction is subject to CIFIUS review isn’t clear-cut. In many cases, firms involved with a transaction that might raise security concerns are expected to notify the committee, which is chaired by the Treasury Department, and that kicks off a review. However, in some cases, when a transaction isn’t referred to the government by the companies involved, government officials can choose to launch an inquiry of their own.

If CFIUS decides a deal poses a security threat, the transaction can be blocked. In other cases, the prospect of a negative CFIUS ruling has caused companies to drop a transaction on their own.

If a Micron deal goes through, it would dwarf all previous Chinese takeovers of U.S. firms. The previous record was Chinese meat processor Shuanghui International Holdings Ltd.’s $7.1 billion takeover of Smithfield Foods Inc. in 2013, according to data provider Dealogic.

The bid reflects a widening push by the Chinese government to build more domestic sources of semiconductors, which are crucial to consumer products like smartphones as well as equipment used for defense purposes. China is particularly weak in memory chips, having developed none of the key technology needed for the data-storing components.

“They have decided that they really have to buy somebody because they can’t deliver the intellectual property themselves,” said Handel Jones, who is president of the Silicon Valley consultancy International Business Strategies and has written books on China’s high-tech policy.

But a big question mark, Mr. Jones said, is whether the U.S. government would allow a foreign company to buy a supplier of such strategic components.

Micron makes a large portion of its chips in U.S. factories, but has large wafer-fabrication facilities in Asia, including in Singapore and Taiwan. It only has an assembly factory in mainland China.

“I think there is a reasonable probability there will be an issue with government approval given a deal of this size,” Mr. Jones said.

Beijing-based Tsinghua Unigroup already has several links to major U.S. companies. It acquired a controlling stake in Hewlett-Packard Co.’s China networking equipment unit in May. Intel Corp. announced last year it would buy a 20% stake in Tsinghua Unigroup for $1.5 billion.

Tsinghua Unigroup, which was founded in 1988 by China’s elite Tsinghua University, became China’s largest chip design firm in 2013 after acquiring two of the country’s largest mobile-chip firms, Spreadtrum Communications and RDA Microelectronics.

Micron, based in Boise, Idaho, is the last remaining U.S. maker of the widely used chips known as dynamic random access memory, or DRAMs. It is No. 2 behind Samsung Electronics Co. in that market, and makes the NAND flash memory used to store data in mobile devices such as smartphones.

Founded in 1978, Micron was once a tiny upstart that challenged much larger chip makers in Silicon Valley and around the world. Many manufacturers once made DRAMs, a technology so widely used it has sometimes been called the crude oil of the information age. But most U.S. companies dropped out of the market by the late 1980s, a result of stiff competition from companies in Asia.

Micron’s stock surged last year on stronger prices of memory chips and signs the market was consolidating to a smaller number of players. But Micron’s stock, which closed 2014 at $35.01, has slid lately on worries about the health of the personal-computer market, a major user of DRAMs.

Micron in June reported a 39% drop in profit for the third fiscal quarter ended June 4.

If completed, a Micron takeover would continue a recent wave of consolidation in the chip sector, driven in part by companies struggling to find growth by other means. The largest to date is a $37 billion cash and stock deal for Avago Technologies Ltd. to buy Broadcom Corp. , announced in late May. Shortly afterward, Intel Corp. announced a deal to buy Altera Corp. for about $16.7 billion in cash.