This decision aims in particular to curb Chinese investments in a technology potentially usable for military purposes.
London announced that it had blocked the acquisition of Pulsic, a British company specializing in the design of electronic circuits, by a Hong Kong-based company, Super Orange HK, citing “a national security risk“, According to a decision published Wednesday at the end of the day.
Minister of Enterprise Kwasi Kwarteng announced on Twitter that he had “made a final decision under the National Security and Investment Act to prevent the acquisition of British electronics design company Pulsic Ltd by Chinese company Super Orange HK Holding Limited“.
Chinese growing investments
Founded in 2000 and based in Bristol (West of England), Pulsic is present in the United Kingdom but also in the United States and Japan and designs software for the semiconductor industry. The company has just over 40 employees according to the firm Dealroom. The company contributes tothe construction of state-of-the-art integrated circuits that could be used for both civilian and military purposes“, can we read in the decision of the Ministry of Enterprise which judges that these tools could be used to introduce functionalities into the circuits, potentially without the knowledge of the user.
Faced with growing concerns in the United Kingdom about Chinese investments in strategic assets, London had at the beginning of the year reinforced its power to control, even to block if necessary, acquisitions of British companies by foreign actors when national security is at stake. In this context, London announced in May to study the impact for its national security of the takeover in the summer of 2021 of the largest British semiconductor manufacturer, the Welsh Newport Wafer Fab, by Nexperia, a Dutch company of semiconductors but belonging to the Chinese Wingtech.
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London had previously announced, in July 2020, the exclusion of Chinese giant Huawei from its 5G network, already citing a risk to the country’s security. And the British press has been talking for months about the possible eviction of CGN, another group from the Middle Kingdom, from the project for a new EPR Sizewell C nuclear power plant, carried by EDF. But the government has still not decided. In addition to Chinese investments, the British government announced in May that it was studying the impact on national security of the increase in the capital of BT by Altice, a company owned by the Franco-Israeli telecom magnate Patrick Drahi.
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