Renesas, NEC getting ready for merger in April '10

TOKYO, JAPAN: Renesas Technology Corporation and NEC Electronics Corporation are getting ready for the merger set for April 2010.

The new company, named Renesas Electronics, will have a semiconductor business totalling about $12 billion – thus making it the third biggest chipmaker, after Intel and Samsung.

Renesas Technology Corporation and NEC Electronics Corporation had, at the end of the last financial year, a combined strength of 15 IC making sites and 25 lines.

By April 1, 2010, the number will be reduced to 10 sites and 16 lines, Matthew Trowbridge, chairman of Renesas Technology Europe, said in a statement.

Renesas Technology Corporation has already reduced its lines from 12 to 8. It has also sold threes 8-inch lines on 3 sites – Renesas Semiconductor Europe (Landshut) GmbH (RSEL) and its 8-inch line in order to enable Silicon Foundry Holding (SFH) to set up LFoundry; the Kumamoto site (with 8-inch line) to Mitsubishi Electric in Tokyo; and HNS in Singapore, with its 8-inch line.

Renesas said it will complete the reduction by integrating a 5-inch line, located in Kofu, into a 6-inch line at the same site.

On its part, NEC Electronics Corporation is reducing 5 of its 13 lines. It has already closed down an 8-inch line at its Yamagata facility as well as a 300mm prototype line at Sagamihara.

NEC Electronics Corporation is set to cut 2 more 6-inch lines – at Roseville, California, the United States, and Kyushu Yamaguichi in Japan. The company also is selling its 6-inch line at Sougang in Beijing, China.