When it comes to TSMC and Samsung Semiconductor, SMIC has to say a legendary figure, that is, Liang Mengsong. He is TSMC's first-class master in the development of advanced semiconductor process modules, which is an area where Samsung Semiconductor, SMIC, and even Singapore Chartered Semiconductor are weak.

After the financial crisis began, Samsung Semiconductor planned to come to TSMC to poach 200 to 300 engineers. However, TSMC quickly offered structural salary adjustments and other plans to retain people, and at the same time persuaded this group of people: "Don't leave, if you go, don't think about coming back." The trend of personnel exodus was immediately curbed. However, a bull-level figure like Liang Mengsong will obviously not be bound by such conditions. In the history of its previous life, Samsung showed great sincerity, not only promising to give Liang the money that he could earn in 10 years at TSMC in three years, but also sending an executive plane to take him and other former TSMC employees back and forth between Taiwan and South Korea. The South Korean government also came forward to persuade him, and he was given the position of general manager of the R&D department and executive vice president of Samsung wafer foundry. It can be said that in addition to the generous treatment, Samsung has given Liang more room to play and respect.

Then a dramatic scene appeared, after leaving TSMC, Liang Mengsong did not directly enter Samsung, but stayed at the Institute of Electrical Engineering of Tsinghua University in Hsinchu for less than a year, and then transferred to Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea to teach, and his students are ten technical masters in Samsung's foundry department. At this time, TSMC discovered his behavior, and a series of bloody things happened. It wasn't until 2011 that he officially joined Samsung.

After Liang Mengsong joined the Samsung Group, in view of Samsung's backward position in the 20nm process, he decided to abandon 20nm and upgrade directly from the 28nm process to 14nm. In the end, Samsung was half a year ahead of TSMC in the 14nm process to achieve mass production flow. Samsung's wafer foundry has also gone from a second-rate company to a giant that can compete with TSMC.

But now it's different, with the addition of Zhou Shi and early action, Singapore Chartered Semiconductor has enough hope to intercept Hu Liang Mengsong. This also requires the cooperation of the Singapore side, but it is a small matter. Although Galaxy Capital is not as big as Samsung, Samsung Group is too big, and the superior forces they can concentrate in a certain direction are not as good as the resources that Galaxy Capital can mobilize. You know, now the memory industry is facing an unprecedented predicament, the world's overcapacity, coupled with the financial crisis, Samsung's life is not easy, but for the sake of the market, they actually have the courage to increase productivity, deliberately magnify the industry's losses, and accelerate the market reshuffle. Not only the memory industry, but also the LED LCD panel is also in a situation of loss in the whole industry, and only they know how much pressure Samsung is on now.

Zhou Shi has long made a decision, strategically giving up the development of memory and liquid crystal, focusing on semiconductor foundry. This is because the strategic position of the chip is better than the memory and LCD panel in any case, and this can also be seen from the difficulty of the technology. All in all, even if Samsung can mobilize more capital resources in the foundry industry than Galaxy Capital, they may not have the courage to do so. If it affects the strategic plans of other industries, even if they succeed in defeating Zhou Shi, it may not lead to good results.

"Mr. Chow, Temasek agreed to our takeover request, and now the discussion is mainly about price. However, they came up with a new proposal and asked if we could package it up to accept James, a Singapore-chartered semiconductor and Anwarco's White Tiger Fund

"Anhua Gao?" Zhou Shi was very unfamiliar with the name

"Avago High-Tech was founded in 1961 as the electronics division of Hewlett-Packard. In 2000, Avago became a division of Agilent Technologies, a spin-off from Hewlett-Packard. In 2005, a group of private equity funds, led by Silver Lake and KKR, acquired Anwar High-Tech for US$2.66 billion, including Temasek. "James

"Oh, how much is Anwar worth now?" Zhou Shi

"Less than $3 billion. "James

"So, does Temasek have a big stake in it?" Zhou Shi

"Not much, the main purpose of their stake is to keep Anwarao in Singapore and increase employment. Now that the goal has been achieved, Anwargo's development has not met expectations, and they naturally want to get rid of it as soon as possible!"

"Then there's no need to be in such a hurry!" Zhou Shi

"No one knows how long the crisis will last, and if something goes wrong in the United States, will the rest of the world be spared? Temasek is also worried about that, and now that the development of the entire semiconductor industry has come to a standstill, they have good reasons to choose to exit now. "James

"Okay then, let's talk, anyway, we don't lack this money now!" Zhou Shi

Well, although it makes sense, James still feels very unhappy, he said that the money is at least hundreds of millions of dollars, hey, rich people are too willful.

What Zhou Shi didn't know was that the development of Anhua High-tech was also a legend, and before Zhou Shi was reborn, they were also planning to acquire Qualcomm. But by that time, they had already changed their name to Broadcom. The history of Anwargo is part of the history of mergers and acquisitions.

In terms of spin-offs, in October 2005, Silver Lake Capital and KKR reached an agreement to sell the storage business to PMC when the acquisition of Avago was not completed (closing on December 1). The transaction was completed at the end of February 2006, netting costs, for $420 million. In February 2006, it sold its printer-specific chip business to Marvell, receiving $245 million after deducting costs, as well as a subsequent $35 million share of excess revenue from performance targets. In November 2006, it sold its image sensor business to Micron for $53 million, with a subsequent $10 million performance share.

In terms of acquisitions, the $400 million acquisition of optical chip supplier CyOptics, the $309 million acquisition of integrated circuit design company PLX Technology, in 2013, Avago announced the acquisition of LSI for $6.6 billion, in May 2015 announced the acquisition of Broadcom for $37 billion, and in 2016 it acquired switch giant Brocade for $5.5 billion. Finally, in November 2017, Broadcom officially offered to acquire Qualcomm for $105 billion. The creator of this legend was Anwar CEO Tan Fu Yang, a Malaysian Chinese, and Zhou Shi soon met this great man in the future.

Temasek wants to transfer Anwarko's shares, and as CEO, it is impossible for Tan Fuyang not to know. Zhou Shi originally thought that this was just a routine inquiry, but he didn't expect that there would be new changes in things.

"You mean you want me to buy more shares and join Anwargo's board of directors?" Zhou Shi looked at Chen Fuyang in front of him in surprise, they didn't have much trust relationship, right?

"That's right, if you want, I can guarantee that you will acquire all the shares except for KKR and Silver Lake Capital, and you can have 1~2 seats on the board of directors. Chen Fuyang said with confidence.

Only then did Zhou Shi learn that KKR and Silver Lake Capital led the formation of Bali Investments (registered in Luxembourg) through multiple platforms, accounting for 80.6% of the common shares. KKR indirectly holds 37.4% of the target stake, Silver Lake Capital holds 36.7%, and Temasek and other private equity funds such as Seletar Investments Pte Ltd hold 10.6% and Geyser Invesment Pte Ltd holds 7.1%.

But the question has not been solved, why did Chen Fuyang want Galaxy Capital to join the board of directors of Avago?

Thanks minman for the monthly pass

(End of chapter)