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I wonder if the US government will be okay with such a large chipmaker to be owned by a Singapore company. Historically, they haven't been too keen on exporting chip tech.

If Qualcomm is on the table, it seems more likely to be approved.




They'll have absolutely no problem with it.

Avago is an American company masquerading as a Singapore company. It's controlled by US money, and it also has a joint HQ in San Jose.

1) "The company was founded in 1961 as a semiconductor products division of HP. The division separated as Agilent Technologies in 1999"

2) "KKR and Silver Lake Partners acquired the division of Agilent Technologies in 2005 for $2.6 billion and formed Avago Technologies"

3) Major shareholders: JP Morgan, FMR, Blackrock, Capital Group, Vanguard, etc. - it's almost entirely controlled by US money interests.


I disagree they will have no problem with it. Maybe NSA but not Senators.

This deal is basically a form of tax inversion. Or is Avago paying all US tax because of the joint HQ in San Jose?


I agree that some Congress members might want to be annoyed by this, but nothing will come of it. It's not a tax inversion in legal terms at all, it's a straight acquisition (there are important distinctions there). Avago was smart to pay a lot of cash as well, to push Broadcom shareholder's ownership position down to about 1/3 (keeping it far away from the tax inversion lines).

Here's why:

"Thursday’s deal isn’t impacted by the Treasury [inversion] guidelines, says Willens, because Broadcom shareholders will own less than 60% of the stock of the acquiring corporation. It’s also not by definition an inversion since Avago is the acquirer, but the result the same. “Here all of the “normal” benefits of an inversion should be freely available,” Willens concludes."

http://www.forbes.com/sites/antoinegara/2015/05/28/could-ava...


Concur completely.




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