The German silicon wafer manufacturer Siltronic will not be sold to Taiwan, Wacker Chemie AG will remain the largest shareholder. The Taiwanese company GlobalWafers wanted to take over Siltronic for more than four billion euros. The offer was provided with a usual grace period. This expired at midnight because the parties involved did not succeed in obtaining the necessary takeover approval from the federal government.
“The test is currently ongoing,” said a spokeswoman for the Federal Ministry of Economics on Monday. There was no further information. It’s no secret that the production of silicon wafers is of strategic importance. Berlin is therefore very skeptical about selling Siltronics to Asia. China’s authorities, on the other hand, have given the go-ahead for the takeover.
Number 4 on the world market
Last week, GlobalWafers made it clear that it would not submit a new offer should the fall deadline expire. The Taiwanese had already announced in November 2020 that they wanted to take over the German wafer manufacturer. A good year ago, GlobalWafer improved the billion-dollar offer for Siltronic.
With a 13 percent share of the sales market for 200 and 300 mm silicon wafers, the Munich-based company Siltronic is the fourth largest manufacturer in the world. Customers are chip manufacturers who use the silicon wafers to make computer chips. GlobalWafers has a 17 percent market share – together the two companies would have come in second behind Shin Etsu (33 percent).
Offers cannot eliminate concerns
Promises from Taiwan have not been able to outweigh German concerns. GlobalWafers had promised not to make any redundancies for Siltronic employees until the end of 2024. The group offered the Federal Republic of Germany a “golden share” with which the federal government could have stopped certain serious corporate decisions.
If GlobalWafers were sold to a third party, Germany would have had the right to buy back Siltronic. A last attempt on Friday to obtain approval through a personal meeting with GlobalWafer CEO Doris Hsu in Berlin was also unsuccessful. The stock market had already guessed that: The Siltronic share price has fallen significantly in the last two weeks.
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