Tsinghua Unigroup withdraws offer to acquire Taiwan's SPIL

Late last year Unigroup proposed to buy a 25% stake each in Power Technology, SPIL and ChipMOS Technologies, Taiwan's leading chip assemblers, for a total of NT$88.1 billion. However, SPIL said in a statement that two parties agreed to terminate the deal. It said the decision was "upon consideration of subjective and objective factors of the company [SPIL] and Unigroup" without further explanation.

Bough Lin, SPIL's chairman, told local media that the deal was unlikely to receive approval from shareholders and the Taiwan government by June. As a result, terminating the deal is the best option for now. Shareholders of Power Technology and ChipMOS approved Unigroup's strategic investments but the deals still require regulatory support. This can be difficult to obtain for Chinese companies targeting Taiwan's semiconductor industry.

Unigroup, a Chinese state-owned investment under Tsinghua University, wants to become the world's third-largest chipmaker and has earmarked RMB300 billion ($47 billion) to support its acquisition efforts both in the US and Taiwan. It privatized US-listed Spreadtrum Communication in 2013 and bought a majority stake in Hewlett-Packard's China data networking business for $2.3 billion last year.

Its aggressive moves have raised US regulatory concerns. Two months ago, Unigroup scrapped its plan to invest in US-based disk drive manufacturer Western Digital after the authorities decided to investigate the deal.

• Tweet  
• Facebook  
• LinkedIn  
• Google plus  
• Save this article  
• Send to  

• Topics
• Greater China
• Technology
• PIPEs
• Regulation
• Technology
• China
• Taiwan (China)
• PIPE