TSMC rules out buying Renesas plant

The founding chairman of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) said the company has no plans to acquire a wafer fab plant from Japanese chipmaker Renesas which has announced job cuts and possible closures or sale of its plants to stem losses.

Taipei Times reported Thursday that Morris Chang said TSMC has formed a good partnership with Renesas since the 1990s, and it will continue to provide advanced chip capacities to the Japanese company as needed. With Renesas cutting down on investment in advanced process technologies, such as 90-nanometer (nm), 28nm and 20nm, it would rely on TSMC to supply those chips, the chairman added.

In late-May, the two companies jointly announced Renesas had expanded its microcontroller outsourcing agreement with TSMC to include 40nm embedded flash technology.

Just about a month later, Renesas on Tuesday, citing an urgent need to revive its business, said it will cut more than 5,000 jobs from its global workforce and possibly close or sell up to 10 of its 18 domestic plants in three years.

A report by Taiwan's Central News Agency said Chang dismissed earlier media claims that TSMC and Renesas were in talks of a possible deal for the Taiwanese firm to acquire the wafer plant in northeastern Japan, along with some 1,400 employees. While Chang mentioned he expected Renesas to outsource more advanced chip production to TSMC in the near future, he emphasized that a plant acquisition was not on the company's agenda, the report stated.