The Taiwanese Foxconn buys ten percent of the Chinese Tsinghua Unigroup – the group has to justify itself for this in its home country and even risks a fine, since no previous and sometimes required permits were obtained.
Hon Hai Precision Industry, alias Foxconn, wants to invest 800 million US dollars indirectly in Tsinghua Unigroup, using the Shanghai-listed subcontractor Foxconn Industrial Internet for this purpose. The Tsinghua Unigroup is the lighthouse project known from China, which is involved in various IT developments, but has experienced both ups and downs. Last year, these went so far that the group had to file for bankruptcy as the mountain of debt had grown to over $30 billion.
But the Chinese government is not dropping the company as a showcase project. According to the official press release, the reorganization of some subcontractors has recently been successfully completed and debts have been repaid. The machine translation sounds almost too good to be true:
After the completion of the reorganization of Tsinghua Unigroup, the company said that after the completion of the new Tsinghua University handover, the huge debt of Tsinghua Unigroup of nearly 150 billion yuan has been smoothly and effectively resolved and properly arranged, the debt ratio has dropped to a reasonable and healthy level, and the asset structure has been fully optimized. , the group's credit and refinancing functions will gradually return to normal, and a comprehensive rescue will be truly realised Foxconn is expanding
The time was still good for an entry, Foxconn thought. It would hardly be possible to get a share of a large company in China cheaper, but this brought the competition watchdogs in Taiwan onto the scene. Because since last year there have been stricter guidelines for close ties between countries, so companies have to ask the authorities for approval before investing, not only afterwards. Foxconn emphasizes that it submitted this on request this week.
Foxconn is also expanding elsewhere. He no longer wants to be considered just an “iPhone manufacturer” and wants to be really involved in the future, especially in the automotive segment. Foxconn will develop and manufacture all SoCs for the Stellantis Group, and a more in-depth cooperation with NXP was also decided this week. Foxconn declared once again that it no longer just bought and processed semiconductors for 60 billion US dollars a year, but also wanted to take more control of the supply chain into its own hands.