China Lures SMIC Co-CEO Zhao

By Alan Patterson, EETimes
March 26, 2019

TAIPEI — China’s Tsinghua Unigroup, the state-owned holding company that controls most of the nation’s semiconductor assets, may snatch a co-CEO from Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) to revive a plan to build a domestic DRAM industry.

According to media reports and to people interviewed by EE Times, Tsinghua aims to hire SMIC Co-CEO Haijun Zhao to head up a new DRAM company that would combine China’s fledgling memory makers, which are struggling to survive. Despite China’s multi-billion investment to build a domestic memory industry, it lacks much of the key intellectual property needed to compete in the business.

The imminent departure of co-CEO Zhao is “pretty much confirmed,” according to a source with first-hand knowledge of SMIC’s top management who spoke on the condition of anonymity to EE Times.

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