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Japan's Elpida to raise $844 mn in share offer

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CIOL Bureau
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TOKYO, JAPAN: Japanese chipmaker Elpida Memory Inc said on Tuesday it would raise up to 78.5 billion yen through a public share offering, to help invest in new equipment and pay back its debt.

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The share issue would increase the number of common shares by 39 per cent.

Elpida, which vies with U.S. chipmaker Micron Technology for the No.3 slot in the DRAM industry after South Korea's Samsung Electronics and Hynix Semiconductor, also said it aims to receive a 20 billion yen investment from Taiwan Memory Company (TMC) by March next year.

It has been in talks with TMC, set up by the Taiwan government to save its own chip sector, about issuing shares to each other. Each would take a stake of less than 10 percent in the other, they had said.

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Elpida, Japan's sole remaining DRAM maker for PCs, issued 30 billion yen worth of preferred shares to the state-backed Development Bank of Japan the previous day.

Elpida, which has been hurt by seven straight quarters of losses, changed its bylaws on Saturday to allow it to issue 3 million preferred shares and an additional 100 million common shares.

The company was pledged an aid package worth 160 billion yen from creditors and partners in June.

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