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Dutch government takes control of Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia

cnbc.com

391–400 of 668 posts

Re: Dutch government takes control of Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia

#391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Arm China CEO went rogue and spun it off as its own company. ARM HQ were unable to fire him, as he had physical possession of the company's seal stamp. Reading between the lines, the Chinese government chose not to intervene for multiple years.

This stuff constantly happens to foreigners in China and just seems to be mostly due to having bad local legal teams. If your CEO can run off with the company stamps and screw you over.. then it just sounds like amateur hour and you have no idea what you're doing. The legal system there is fundamentally very bureaucratic - there are rules, but they're very different from the West. You need local help - and a lot of i…

If it’s constantly happening, does that sound like an attractive market to work in? I’m very open to the idea of companies screwing up, but day-to-day operations shouldn’t look Kafkaesque.

Re: Dutch government takes control of Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia

#392
post #374
post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nor for long. If the Chinese didn't already have incentives to break ASML's monopoly, they do now.

There's more to that than just ASML, as that company in turn uses specialty lenses produced by Zeiss. Additionally there's crucial American IP (I don't recall what specifically) that goes into those machines, so advanced semiconductor production is more of a global effort really. Meanwhile China is trying to do all that domestically. They might even pull this off, but just like with their 7nm tech, they're unlikely t…

> (I don't recall what specifically)

I believe it's the lightsource, made by Cymer of San Diego before ASML took them over.

Re: Dutch government takes control of Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia

#393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Netherlands AND Holland? Isn't that the same place? Holland is part of the Netherlands. Not unlike how say Texas is part of the United States. So in that regard the statement was redundant, yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holland

And ASML is not in Holland, nor is Nexperia or ASMI. I can't think of any semiconductor business in "Holland".

ASML has offices in Delft, so in proper HN Standard Pedantic Form: Well, actually there is!

Re: Dutch government takes control of Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia

#394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody is a fan of free access and capital markets, until a foreign entity purchases something of importance. It’s a continuation of recent trends and closing markets. Nobody in their sane mind would allow a company like ASML or the likes to be purchased by competitors. But the irony is that when a non-European entity were to do something like this, e.g. nationalize their oil or mining etc. industry or a firm, the…

The age of globalism and unfettered free trade is over, and good riddance.

People are going to miss it in the age of fractured, paranoid isolation.

Re: Dutch government takes control of Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia

#395
post #88

A bit of history: Nexperia was formed because back in 2017 (if I remember correctly) Qualcomm wanted to buy NXP. So NXP wanted to look more attractive to Qualcomm shareholders and sold its more low-tech business unit to Chinese investors. That acquisition didn't go through because of the tensions between US and China during the first Trump admin. NXP has been trimming fat since its formation from Philips Semiconducto…

> NXP has been trimming fat since its formation from Philips Semiconductors Honestly it appears to me that Philips themselves have just been losing talent/marketshare/I'm not even sure what, causing their gradual decline. The Philips I grew up with was an electronics powerhouse. Today apart, from their healthcare department (and maybe their slightly overpriced lighting department via Signifify), they don't seem to be…

This has been going on for decades.

I once did a brief consulting stint at what was then considered one of the most innovative, startuppy departments of Philips Healthcare, and it was by far the slowest-moving, least productive software team I've ever seen.

They had just "ended a sprint" when I came in, and 3 months later they still hadn't started another. People were just fooling around. There was a rule that talking about work during lunch was a no-no (so we talked about hockey and babies, the only subjects that 2+ people had in common). Testers were a separate team, and they refused to test things, no matter how small, without being allocated months of dedicated time to first make a detailed 50-page docx "test scenario". The mini product I was assigned to work on took 3 months to complete but the 5-page spec had been argued over for the past 18 months and signed off by, in total, 8 managers and 6 directors. I was the only person shipping anything of actual business value during that period (not because I'm so great, just because I was the only one asked to do anything of business value).

This is now a decade and a half ago. With the series of number-crunching Excel MBAs leading Philips since then I quite doubt that this will have changed for the better.

Re: Dutch government takes control of Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia

#396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> free for me but not for thee That's rich, coming from a country which outright bands foreign corporations from even operating within their borders, and those who they allow have to operate through a state-controlled corporate minder.

>That's rich, coming from a country What country do you know Globalnode is coming from? Just interested in the high level of assurance.

He was talking about china because that's the subject in this story, not the poster's residence.

Re: Dutch government takes control of Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia

#397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if we are not a communist country (everyone seems to think that we are not) why the F would we socialize losses?!? Hold on, the logic is any country that socialises anything to any degree is communist? Where the hell did you get that from?

If you use the word "Socialise" then the current trend of reactionary ill-informed is to assume "Communism". It's an argument I'm sick of having, but it's an argument that needs to be had.

> it's an argument I'm sick of having, but it's an argument that needs to be had

OP [1] is the first person to make the argument that socialising anything implies communism in this thread. The entire shtick is a straw man. It doesn't need to be argued if it's only brought up by the side tearing it down.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45575045

Re: Dutch government takes control of Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia

#398
post #334

The title is misleading. The Dutch government says it can now reverse or hold back decisions made within the company if they are deemed damaging to the Dutch or European production. I assume the law is written in a way that allows the government to only intervene if it is for such things. A judge would ultimately decide whether it is, if it gets to that point. I wouldn't call that "taking control" necessarily. Taking…

> Wingtech Chairman Zhang Xuezheng had been immediately suspended from his roles as executive director of Nexperia Holdings and nonexecutive director of Nexperia after the ministerial order, according to the filing. Not sure what firing the boss is, if not taking control...

Firing a company's boss and appointing a trustee is uncommon, but it happens.

E.g. at IT service provider Centric, where the majority owner and CEO had a mental breakdown. Employees suffered from his delusions, but it also threatened to affect customers. The trustees aren't government agents, they just run the business as a going concern, minus the mismanagement (in this case, minus the mental illness).

US law also provides for a CEO to be ousted and a trustee to be appointed in cases of mismanagement or fraud. I wouldn't call that taking control, in much the same way as bankruptcy proceedings appointing a trustee don't amount to government taking control.

Now, the article refers to a filing made by former management. That filing is conflating the order and the firing of the CEO. The ministerial order didn't fire the CEO, that was a separate action filed by the company's works council and happened before the order was issued. The reason for the firing lies mostly in mismanagement and conflicts of interest.

The ministerial order is much more limited in scope, allowing the government to roll back decisions detrimental to the company - especially transfers of assets.

It's a shame that CNBC is just parroting the former management's objections, rather than you know, doing any reporting.

In both the order and the legal case, it's clear the ownership/management wanted to shut down the company and take the assets. The company was also not doing OK financially, and this kind of thing reeks of bankruptcy fraud (i.e. fraudulent conveyance).

The kind of tech nexperia makes isn't rocket science but I could imagine they produce some chips that are used in essential supply chains. So rather than wait for the bankruptcy and the fraud to happen, the company was restricted from transferring assets.

So the wording "takes control" is misleading. "subjected to additional oversight" is perhaps too wordy but more accurate. "put on a leash" might be a good way of putting it.

Re: Dutch government takes control of Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia

#399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody is a fan of free access and capital markets, until a foreign entity purchases something of importance. It’s a continuation of recent trends and closing markets. Nobody in their sane mind would allow a company like ASML or the likes to be purchased by competitors. But the irony is that when a non-European entity were to do something like this, e.g. nationalize their oil or mining etc. industry or a firm, the…

> Everybody is a fan of free access and capital markets, until a foreign entity purchases something of importance. The problem with China is that the "free access" was always one-sided as we did not insist on reciprocity - not for the Internet, not for tourism, not for companies, not for goods. We gave China everything - we allowed their people to study at our universities, we allowed their tourists, we gave them vir…

[dead]

Re: Dutch government takes control of Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia

#400

50 years of sending all the knowledge to China and now sudden realization that „data is the value”. Work was cheap, but we paid in IP and tech as a whole. It’s great to see how long term is China strategy and how well they execute it. Good luck for us all being „independent”. We can make processors out of attached plastic bottle caps…

It is funny that there are more people blaming China than the shareholders that made trillions of dollars.

Easier to blame a foreign villain than to hold the shareholder class accountable.
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