Monday, March 30, 2009

On the hunt for subsidies

Jens Hartmann and Jan Hildebrand report in the German daily Die Welt of March 30 and 29, that potential investors are being attracted to rescue Qimonda, or parts of it, with one of the main arguments being that plenty of public subsidies would be available both from the German state of Sachsen and the Portuguese state for that purpose. Potential investors could "pick the roses" of their choice, meaning the parts of current Qimonda they would like to take with them...
You may read it in German at http://www.welt.de/welt_print/article3468462/Qimonda-lockt-mit-Aussicht-auf-Steuergelder.html , or at
http://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article3466404/Qimonda-will-Investoren-mit-Steuergeld-locken.html

posted by Carlos A. Páscoa Machado @ 5:24 PM 0 comments

Saturday, March 28, 2009

One maquiladora in Vila do Conde

Rui Figueiredo, in a letter to the editors of the daily newspaper Público, published March 28, 2009, calls our attention to the fact that there had been previously to Qimonda other assemblers/producers of semi-conductors in Portugal and mentions Standard Electric, Signetics, Texas Instruments, and Philips, as having been established just for that same kind of products mainly in the 70s, perhaps in a smaller scale than Qimonda, but this would take away from Qimonda the pioneer role many attribute to her, even if not herself. The role of all these “factories”, including Qimonda, would just be to import the so-called wafers, in the case of Qimonda from her own factory in Dresden, to cut them, to encapsulate, test and assemble them.

We add our hypothesis: Qimonda/Infineon came to Portugal just to take advantage of the comparatively low Portuguese salaries and of the government subsidies it was able to harvest. Qimonda pulled the plug in Dresden and there was no way Qimonda could survive in Vila do Conde, as the facilities here were just an assembling factory, a maquiladora.

posted by Carlos A. Páscoa Machado @ 7:16 PM 4 comments

Friday, March 27, 2009

Endgame in Portugal for Qimonda

Anke Schröter reported on March 27, 2009 (http://www.evertiq.com/news/13776) :

“Yesterday, the Portuguese subsidiary of German memory chip manufacturer Qimonda had to file for insolvency. This means that the facility in Vila do Conde will probably be closed down, Portuguese media reported.
However, the management is trying to save the location and the company, the reports continued. They are now primarily focused on possible restructuring plans that will help secure the 1300 jobs at the facility in Vila do Conde. The difficult situation within the global DRAM market was given as reason for the insolvency filing.
As reported earlier, Portugal had promised to help the entire Qimonda group with an unspecified double-digit percentage figure - providing that the facility in Vila do Conde would be maintained.”

Only a couple of years ago and intermittently since then the Portuguese government had been pouring allegedly over 100 million Euros in subsidies into this project and bragging Qimonda had significantly contributed to upgrade Portuguese foreign trade structure from one proper of a low tech country to one characteristic of a medium- high tech nation. What might have gone wrong? Was it the management strategy? Did Qimonda’s products become suddenly obsolete, or was the crisis just triggered by a price plunge in a market prone to high volatility? The Portuguese minister of the economy angrily reacted that he was going to try to get the subsidies returned “to the last cent/tostão”. Had the government miscalculated the soundness of the project in terms of costs and benefits, and of its durability? Had the government overestimated the social benefits of Qimonda for Portugal? Why did the EU commission abstain of any interference? Should it interfere and throw this firm a lifeline? After all this would be the only semiconductor still left in Europe...
Who messed things up?

posted by Carlos A. Páscoa Machado @ 7:45 PM 0 comments