AMD contemplates spin-off chip manufacturing
Advanced Micro Devices Inc or AMD which is a leading company in manufacturing chips in the industry has said that it has finally got enough votes from the stockholders in the favor of spinning of the chip manufacturing operation of the company and also to approve the plan, after their initial attempt failed during the last week which was due to the lack of quorum.
The approval of stockholders would take AMD a huge step near to splitting off their chip plants into a separate company. It is a move that is aimed at letting the semiconductor chip maker to become more viable against Intel Corp. however it was also reported by AMD about their 9 quarterly losses and also about laying off workers as they expect to unload nearly $1.2 billion of debt including their manufacturing expenses through this spin-off plan. Apart form this AMD also said in an announcement about their stockholder’s vote that, the transaction which is an investment firm that is controlled by the Abu Dhabi government in the United Arab Emirates would also take over most part of the ownership over the chip plants. This is now expected to be completed by the 2nd of March.
However, even today, there were just hardly enough votes cast at the continuation of the special meeting of the stockholders to endorse the spin-off. A spokesperson of AMD said that nearly 50.26 percent of share owners of AMD cast ballots, while around 95 percent of the votes were in the favor of the proposal. The company had postponed the scheduled vote session last week after they failed to get the essential minimum of 50 percent turnout during the first stockholder meeting. According to AMD, The votes were received just for 42 percent of the shares of the company during that point
AMD the chip maker also announced the manufacturing spin-off much earlier by saying that the company will focus on the chip design and the marketing while also shift manufacturing to an entirely new which is currently called as the Foundry Co. AMD would hold around 34.2 percent of the ownership stakes for the manufacturing business while the remaining would be owned by Advanced Technology Investment Co based in Abu Dhabi. The company would have originally owned around 44.4 percent but the ownership position of the company was reduced in December after the faced a value drops in their stocks. According to the market research firm IDC, the spin-off would take over the chip plans in Germany and in the United States from AMD as the PC microprocessors shares of which in unit shipment had fell to around 17.7 in the last four quarter of last year. IDC further said that, it had been even down to around 23.1 percent during the forth quarter of the year 2007whcih had put the shares of Intel to Q4 processor shipments at around 81.3 percent and so there was this decision taken by the IDC.
