by Anton Shilov
01/30/2003 | 09:29 PM
In early January 2003 Infineon attempted to gain control over the joint venture ProMOS by promoting four its employees in the eight-member management board of the company, but failed when only two members were selected during the Extraordinary Shareholder Meeting without Infineon’s electors (see this news-story for more details). After the elections Infineon sent injunction applications to the Hsinchu District Court in Taiwan accusing ProMOS of illegally removing two board-members.
This week the Hsinchu District Court in Taiwan has approved both of Infineon’s injunction applications against ProMOS. Following the ruling, two Infineon employees will immediately resume office, which were illegally removed at the Extraordinary Shareholder Meeting of ProMOS on January 10. It is reported that Angela Shih will serve as Supervisor and Michael Buckermann as member of the ProMOS Board of Directors. <%BANNER[article]%>
Effective immediately, Infineon terminates the technology license agreement with ProMOS due to a serious breach of contract as ProMOS is supplying all products manufactured with Infineon technology to Mosel Vitelic and due to destruction of the relationship of trust between the contract partners which is inevitably necessary for such a license agreement.
As a result of all events happened with ProMOS recently, the latter is in very difficult situation these days. Beginning from the 1st January 2003, Infineon no longer buys DRAM chips from ProMOS and the latter needs to market its production somehow. The obvious decision was to sell the chips to Mosel Vitelic, but after all, Infineon withdrew its technology license, as it had terminated the agreement with Mosel Vitelic before, and now ProMOS does not have any rights to sell memory made using Infineon’s technology. Furthermore, now Infineon has four seats in the nine-member management board. The ninth member of the board is rumoured to be Mr. Robert Tsao from UMC, who has very close relations with Infineon. Such situation is really good for Infineon, who can now try to push on those decisions that are favourable for the German-based semiconductor company. Although it is currently hard to tell what will happen, it is really likely that Infineon will try to do something to force ProMOS to manufacture DRAM products exclusively for the developer of their fabrication process. I still remember that the latter wanted 100% of the former’s manufacturing capacity in Fall 2002 (see this news-story)…
PS. Yesterday it was reported that Infineon got rid of nearly 3.6 million of ProMOS shares and we wondered who had bought them (see this news-story). Well, in the light of the current situation it is very likely that UMC could buy the shares, as its CEO is now also in the management board of ProMOS. Though, the information was not confirmed nor denied by any officials.