It has been revealed that the Fair Trade Commission (Chairman Cho Sung-wook) has completed its review of Analog Devices' acquisition of Maxim and Global Wafers' acquisition of Siltronic.


The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) has recently received and is reviewing five business combination applications related to the restructuring of the global semiconductor market, and has approved two of them.

Analog Devices' acquisition of Maxim and Global Wafers' acquisition of Siltronic recently completed their respective reviews and were approved.

Analog Devices signed a contract to acquire a 69% stake in Maxim (USA) for $21 billion (approximately 23 trillion won) in July 2020, and reported the merger to the Fair Trade Commission in November 2020.

Regarding this corporate merger, the Fair Trade Commission approved it, deeming that there were no concerns about restricting competition, considering the presence of strong competitors in the relevant market and the small increase in market share of 6 percentage points.

Global Wafers (Taiwan) requested a preliminary review by the Fair Trade Commission in January 2021 to acquire more than 50% of Siltronic (Germany) shares (30.8% + public offering α) for $4.5 billion (approximately 5 trillion won).

Regarding this corporate merger, the Fair Trade Commission approved it, deeming that there were no concerns about restricting competition, taking into account the presence of numerous strong competitors in the relevant market and the fact that the buyers were large semiconductor companies (Samsung, TSMC, Intel, etc.).

The merged company will be ranked second with a market share of 28% after the merger, but will be ranked third with the first and third largest companies.As the market share gap is only within 5%p, it is expected that competition in the market will continue in the future.

The remaining three cases, including SK Hynix's acquisition of Intel's NAND flash business and AMD's merger with Xilinx, are under review.

SK Hynix (Korea) signed a contract to acquire Intel (USA)'s NAND flash and SSD (Solid State Drive) business unit (Dalian, China) for $9 billion (approximately 10 trillion won) in October 2020, and reported the business combination to the Fair Trade Commission in January 2021.

SK Hynix is strengthening its NAND flash business, which is underperforming compared to DRAM, to strengthen its competitiveness in the memory semiconductor market, and Intel, a comprehensive semiconductor company, appears to be restructuring its non-core business divisions, which account for less than 10% of total sales, to focus on system semiconductors such as AI semiconductors.

Overseas, the United States has completed its review and approved the application, and six countries, including the EU, China, Brazil, the United Kingdom, and Singapore, are currently conducting reviews.

Among the mergers between different companies, the acquisition of Xilinx, Inc. by AMD (Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.) and the acquisition of ARM (ARM Holdings) by NVIDIA Corporation are currently under review.

A Fair Trade Commission official stated, “We will conduct the review as quickly as possible to ensure that the merger review does not interfere with the restructuring of the semiconductor market. However, for mergers that may restrict competition, we will conduct the review after closely analyzing the impact on the relevant market.”