The Taiwanese chip supplier Globalwafers is increasing its takeover offer for the German silicon wafer manufacturer Siltronic, as expected by many investors. Instead of the previous 125 euros, Globalwafers now offers 140 euros per outstanding common share, as the company announced on Friday. That results in a purchase price of around 4.2 billion instead of 3 75 billion euros.

All other conditions of the takeover offer remain unchanged. The shareholders can continue until 27. January 2021 consider accepting the offer. Many should have expected improvements anyway, because the share price had risen after the first offer in December to more than 140 euros.

German employees protected The major shareholder Wacker Chemie had already in December 2020 contractually assured to sell its barely 27 – percent share in Siltronic, which is just under 1, Would flush 2 billion euros into the till. In December, Globalwafers required a minimum acceptance threshold of 53 percent. According to the announcement on Friday, the group currently holds 4 33 percent of Siltronic.

For the In the event of a successful takeover, Globalwafers had announced that German Siltronic locations would be protected from closures until the end 2024, just as the employees in Germany would be protected from redundancies for operational reasons. With a percent market share, Siltronic is the world’s fourth largest manufacturer of 200 and 300 mm large silicon wafers. TSMC, Samsung, Intel and Globalfoundries, among others, need the silicon wafers to manufacture CPUs, GPUs and other chips. GlobalWafers has 17 percent market share – together the companies would be in second place behind Shin Etsu (33 percent).

(mma)