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Technology Stocks : Ultratech Stepper -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: David Aegis who wrote (2447)	5/14/1998 10:49:00 PM
From: My Father's Son	Respond to of 3696

Any news on the ISI talks? DMM

To: David Aegis who wrote (2447)	5/16/1998 5:24:00 PM
From: Justa Werkenstiff	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3696

David: I think you may be giving me way too much credit but I will take it <g>. Here is some more pure speculation. I believe that the that the impetus behind the ISI acquisition talks resulted from this whole EUV flap that seemed to pit UTEK, ISI and SVGI against ASMLF, Nikon and Canon. Perhaps it became apparent with INTC complaining about the production capacity of the US lithography companies that they had better join forces against the foreigners or risk being passed up by the chipmakers. Furthermore, I believe at least the timing of the ASLMF announcement to venture into UTEK's turf (March 31, 1998) was aimed at further isolating and minimizing the potential of UTEK in the marketplace for EUV development. I think, quite frankly, that ASMLF got pissed off at UTEK for its leadership against foreign participation in EUV development in the US. I am under the impression that ASLMF was trying to muscle it way into the US EUV consortium. Some guy by the name of Michael Borrus from the Berkley Roundtable on the International Economy presented a paper stating that ASLMF had technology that was needed by the US lithography companies for the development of EUV and that ASMLF would benefit US EUV development in its battle against Japanese EUV development. UTEK nearly puked at this assertion and wrote its own paper in response which stated: "The argument that foreign technology is advanced and can assist EUV development is a central theme of the paper, and is wrong. No foreign stepper has company has any technology related to EUV lithography that leads the United States." I bet you ASLMF was real happy about that conclusion and decided to retaliate by announcing some venture into UTEK's turf that may have been in the works. The timing, at least, of that announcement does not appear coincidental. That release was clearly targeted at UTEK. The Borrus paper went on to say that SVGI had no objection to ASLMF participation in the production of EUV. Pappy did puke at this and was described in High Performance Computing as being "angry" at such an assertion and was quoted as saying the assertion was "bullshit." Yes, "bullshit" was the quote. Amazing. What may have developed as a result of this flap was an us (US lithography makers) versus them (everyone else) mentality. Where this goes from here if anywhere is anyone's guess.