China’s state-backed Tsinghua Unigroup suggested a strategic partnership to SK Hynix last month but was rejected immediately. Chinese company has been aiming for the memory market, which is dominated by Korean semiconductor manufacturers.
SK Hynix said on Nov. 26 that it is true that Tsinghua Unigroup offered the partnership but the company rejected. Based on Taiwan’s local media reports, the news that Tsinghua Unigroup failed to establish partnership with SK Hynix spread through the domestic stock industry, .
According to the reports, Tsinghua Unigroup offered to buy 15 to 20 percent of SK Hynix, at a condition that SK Hynix sets up a factory in China to produce NAND flash products. However, SK Hynix immediately rejected the offer since it believed that there would be no solid benefits.
Tsinghua Unigroup, which aims to become a major global semiconductor player in China, recently made massive investment in the U.S.-based Western Digital to acquire Sandisk, making a lot of waves in the industry.
Previously, Chinese state-owned corporation failed to take over U.S. memory chip maker Micron Technology, which is one of the world’s top three memory semiconductor players along with Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. After that, the company changed its direction to promote cooperation in the memory business with Micron but this is not quite favorable as well.