Infineon buys IR

Dr Reinhard Ploss – Infineon

Infineon is to buy the world’s oldest independent semiconductor company, International Rectifier, for $3 billion. The deal is 50% above IR’s market cap yesterday.

Founded in 1947, IR has been run as a standalone semiconductor company – until today.

Eric Lidow, who died last year aged 100, co-founded IR with his father. He was CEO until 1995 but even after handing the management of the company to his two sons, he was still going into into the office every day at the age of 94.

The two sons, Alex and Derek became co-CEO in 1995, but Derek left in 1999 to set up the semiconductor industry analyst company iSuppli.

“The acquisition of International Rectifier is a unique opportunity,” says Dr Reinhard Ploss Infineon’s CEO, “with their great knowledge of specific customer needs and their application understanding, International Rectifier employees will contribute to Infineon’s strategic development from product thinking to system understanding and system solutions. The combination of Infineon’s and International Rectifier’s products, technological and innovative excellence, as well as distributional strength will unleash great potential.”

Infineon says its and IR’s product portfolios are highly complementary. IR’s expertise in low-power, IGBTs, intelligent power modules, power mosfets and digital power management ICs will integrate with Infineon’s offering in power devices and modules.

With IR, Infineon acquires its in-house gallium nitride on silicon (GaN) process which, unlike several others, is producing real power semiconductors.

Infineon already has a silicon carbide (SiC) process and products, so now it can make discretes and integrated circuits with both of the new kids on the power block, as well as using its established silicon power processes.

The integration of International Rectifier will generate economies of scale through optimisation of the combined entity’s operating expense structure and through the acceleration of the ramp-up of Infineon’s leading 300-millimeter thin wafer manufacturing capability.

- See more at: http://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/infineon-buys-ir-2014-08/#sthash.rHbc5MxO.dpuf

英飛凌最大收購 30億美元收購IR半導體

‧VR-Zone中文站 2014/08/21

最早由 Siemens 半導體部門獨立出來，目前主攻車用電子與電源方案的 Infineon（英飛凌），日前宣布了將以 30 億美金收購美國的 International Rectifier 公司。

低調的德國半導體大廠 Infineon 出手收購美國同業。 最早由 Siemens 半導體部門獨立出來，目前主攻車用電子與電源方案的 Infineon（英飛凌），日前宣布了將以 30 億美金收購美國的 International Rectifier 公司。 來自美國矽谷，簡稱 IR 的 International Rectifier，主要提供電力電子領域的解決方案，在很多 3C 產品都能夠看到由 IR 所生產的電源開關晶體或是控制器。 這次行動將會是 Infineon 史上最大的一宗收購案。 根據協議，Infineon 以每股 40 美元的價格收購 IR，收購程序將在 2014 年末到 2015 年初間完成。消息傳出後，IR 的股價大漲了 47%，來到了 39.1 美元。預期本次的收購完成之後，未來將能夠大幅提升 Infineon 的收益，至少可以達到年度利潤目標的 15% 。