Just to prove it’s can be done, Marvell Technology Group Ltd. (NASDAQ: MRVL) says it has received timely approval of its planned purchase of Inphi from the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) of the People's Republic of China. The company now says it plans to close the deal next month, pending approval by the stockholders of the two companies, as well as satisfaction of other customary closing conditions.
Marvell announced last October that it had reached agreement to buy Inphi for approximately $10 billion ( see “Marvell to buy Inphi”). The two companies primarily make communications silicon, although Inphi has branched out into optical transceivers with its COLORZ portfolio. Marvell sees the addition of Inphi as expanding its footprint into cloud and data center networking as well as deepening its current hand in 5G.
The company originally estimated that the deal would close in the second half of this year. But apparently Marvell had expected the SAMR approval process to take longer than it proved to. SAMR approval had held up two recent optical communications deals, II-VI’s buy of Finisar and Cisco’s purchase of Acacia Communications (see, for example, “II-VI to refile Finisar purchase approval request with Chinese authority” and “Cisco, Acacia Communications optimistic about merger approval from China”). In the latter case, the delay almost caused the deal to founder (see “Acacia Communications says Cisco merger is off; Cisco disagrees” and “Cisco, Acacia Communications renegotiate merger at higher price”).
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