(Reuters) – U.S. chipmaker Maxlinear said on Wednesday it has scrapped a near $4 billion deal to acquire Taiwan-based Silicon Motion.
Its shares fell about 12% in late afternoon trading, while the U.S.-listed shares of the Taiwanese company surged 25%.
MaxLinear had agreed to buy the memory controller-maker Silicon Motion in May last year in a cash-and-stock deal worth $4 billion. Memory controllers are used to manage data in memory chips.
More NAND flash components, including current and up-coming generations of 3D flash produced by Kioxia, Micron Technology, Samsung, SK Hynix, Western Digital and YMTC, are supported by Silicon Motion’s controllers than any other company.
NAND flash memory chips do not need power to retain data and are used in smartphones, personal computers and data center servers.
MaxLinear was to pay $93.54 in cash and about 0.4 of its share for each Silicon Motion’s American depositary shares, representing a total consideration of $114.34 per ADS.
(Reporting by Akash Sriram and Chavi Mehta in Bengaluru)
