In a more serious vein to my comment on Micron: Credit in international transactions is normally extended on a bank to bank level, through time or sight letters of credit. AMAT has undoubtedly in the past uniformly sold to Korean fabs under letters of credit, confirmed by AMAT's US banks. (The fab applies to its local bank, which issues its L/C to AMAT. AMAT's US bank "confirms", essentially guarantees, the L/C, and AMAT gets its money when it presents documents proving it has fulfilled its obligations under the L/C. If it has shipped under a time L/C, it gets its money on a deferred basis).
The problem currently is that US banks have closed down additional credit to their Korean counterparts. They may be rolling over some credit outstanding, but they are trying to decrease their exposure overall. The Korean banks don't have the credit to support purchases by their Korean fab customers.
Any discussions going on are undoubtedly aimed at providing bridge financing, to allow transactions to continue--with US companies, rather than banks, bearing a greater part of the credit risk. This can be accomplished partially by the fabs pledging some of their assets in support of the equipment, or perhaps some of their output. In that case it would be similar to a factoring arrangement that is frequently used in the US for a number of industries--most notably clothing mfrs. The problem, as pointed out on this thread, is enforcement in Korea of any asset pledge agreement. Presumably, the bridge financing would end when the IMF and bank-to-bank relations are settled. Or, at least that is what SEMI would want.
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