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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Justa Werkenstiff who wrote (29885)	5/3/1999 6:55:00 AM
From: Duker	Respond to of 70976

Winbond says to get T$10 bln loan TAIPEI, May 3 (Reuters) - Taiwan microchip maker Winbond Electronics said on Monday it was signing an agreement with a banking consortium for a T$10 billion syndicated loan to raise funds for a new wafer fabrication plant. ''Our chairman Authur Chiao just signed an agreement with a banking consortium at 4:00 p.m. (0800 GMT) for a seven-year-term T$10 billion syndicated loan, which we will use for our new wafer plant,'' a Winbond executive said by telephone. Under the deal, Winbond would pay an interest rate equivalent to the one-year fix-deposit rate of Taiwan's postal savings bank, plus a 0.65 percent annual rate and processing charges. The current one-year fixed deposit rate of the postal bank, usually lower than rates offered by regular banks, is around 5.7 percent. The grace period for the loan deal is two years and six months, the executive said. The new plant, Winbond's fifth, will produce dynamic random access memory chips, or DRAM, using Japan's Toshiba Corp technology, the executive said. Toshiba has licenced Winbond to use its 0.175- and 0.15-micron CMOS technology, which will enable Winbond to make 512 megabit DRAM chips. The Japanese firm has also granted Winbond rights to chipmaking process technology that Toshiba has developed with U.S. giant IBM Corp (IBM - news) and Siemens AG (quote from Yahoo! UK & Ireland: SIEG.F) of Germany. Commercial run of the fifth plant, which began construction in the third quarter of 1998, is expected in July with initial capacity set at 15,000 per month, the executive said. Winbond has already raised US$167 million for its new plant through issuing 14.6 million units of global depositary receipts in Luxembourg in February. Winbond began producing its first batches of DRAM in mid-1998 at a time when prices of the memory chips worldwide were falling due to oversupply. Winbond vice president C.C. Chang has said because of the company's late participation in the market, it did not suffer as much as other firms from falling prices. Company officials said now that DRAM prices had improved, opening the fifth plant should increase Winbond's sales. Winbond posted a pre-tax loss of T$1.985 billion for 1998 due to Asia's recession and slack world demand for its semiconductors. The company's first and second plants produce electronic consumer products. Its third plant was closed after it was gutted by a fire when the plant was under construction. (US$ = T$32.68)