Last October, the American giant Intel agreed to sell its NAND memory chip business to SK Hynix for nine billion dollars (201 billion CZK). The transaction is the largest acquisition in the history of SK Hynix. The Korean company is trying to increase the production capacity of these chips, which are used to store data in smartphones and data center servers.
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“It has been speculated that it will be difficult for SK Hynix to obtain approval for the deal in China, or that any approval could be significantly delayed due to the complexity of the situation … amid tensions between the United States and China in the semiconductor sector,” said SK Hynix. He added that the fact that the agreement was beneficial for all three countries helped to approve it.
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The Chinese approval authority made the condition that SK Hynix should not force Chinese customers to purchase exclusively its products or products from companies controlled by SK Hynix. The company should not even enter into agreements with its main competitors in China that eliminate or restrict competition. The transaction also includes Intel’s NAND chip plant in the Chinese city of Ta-lien.
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According to analysts, the agreement will help SK Hynix to narrow its gap behind the chip market leader, Samsung Electronics. SK Hynix shares closed Wednesday with a gain of two percent, significantly above the South Korean stock index KOSPI, which strengthened by 0.3 percent.
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