Tuesday July 4, 5:27 am Eastern Time
SanDisk to invest $75 mln in Tower
TEL AVIV, July 4 (Reuters) - Israel's Tower Semiconductor said on Tuesday it had entered into an agreement under which SanDisk will make a $75 million strategic investment in Tower.
In return, California-based SanDisk, the world largest supplier of flash data storage products, will receive equity, representation on Tower's board and committed production capacity in the advanced chip plant Tower plans to build in Migdal Haemek, Israel. The total cost of the new plant is estimated at $1.5 billion through the end of 2003.
Tower said it plans to raise additional equity, mostly from other strategic partners in similar transactions, of about $350 million. It is expected that following the completion of all the financing transactions necessary for the new wafer manufacturing facility, SanDisk will hold about 10 percent of Tower, while the Israel Corp will have about 20 percent.
Additional strategic partners that will join the initiative will together hold appoximately 30 percent of the company.
Following the agreement with SanDisk, Tower said it expects to announce similar agreements with the additional wafer partners in the very near future. |
