Replies to post #143169 on Intel Corp (INTC)

[Unkwn]

Abu Dhabi Fund Said to Be Exploring Sale of Globalfoundries

I think Tsinghua/China could be interested in this deal. They won't get any memory specific technology this way, though, but from what I have read so far, I think they are about to invest a sum that easily will allow them to produce logic chips at leading edge nodes as well.

According to this Mc Kinsey report, the chinese government plans to invest up to 170 billion dollar into the semiconductor business.:

The government, realizing that earlier bureaucrat-led investment initiatives failed to bring the desired results, is now aiming to take a market-based investment approach. In this case, decisions about allocating for-profit investment funds will be managed by professionals but will remain aligned with the government’s policy objectives. Chinese officials have convened a unique task force charged with setting an aggressive growth strategy (see sidebar, “A different type of task force”). This group helped develop a policy framework that is targeting a compound annual growth rate for the industry of 20 percent between now and 2020, with potential financial support from the government of up to 1 trillion renminbi ($170 billion) over the next five to ten years. Investments will be made by a national investment vehicle (the National Industry Investment Fund) and provincial-level entities. These entities will invest across multiple categories, including project finance and domestic and foreign acquisitions, as well as traditional research and development subsidies and tax credits.

If true, I think that would easily allow them to end at the leading edge of the logic business as well as the memory business. Still, they can't buy know-how that easily and building it themselves is not just a question of money but also time. Acquiring Globalfoundries would make sense in that regard. The problem is, a bit similar to the flash memory business, that there are many joint ventures and partnership in place, so you would need an agreement with multiple companies and also their countries of origin to agree with such a deal. That's not easy to get. Globalfoundries has partnered with Samsung for 14nm and has fabs in the US and Europe. Sandisk has a partnership with Toshiba, which probably will be protected by the japanese government. In addition, to acquire Sandisk, Tsinghua would have to acquire Western Digital, which, to a big part, consists of a dying business (magnetic HDD). It's not easy to enter this business, even with that huge amount of money.

In any case, China clearly is seeing the potential of the semiconductor market, unlike Europa and maybe US also. It's a 300 billion + market which is actually set to be growing (NVM storage, IoT etc.). To stand at the top of this market, with all its barriers for new entrants and consolidated competition, is not too bad, is it?

[Elmer Phud]

Andy

This has to be a blow to the last few believers hanging on to the hope that Mubadala Development Co will swoop in and rescue AMD from bankruptcy at the last minute.