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state corporations to acquire innovative foreign companies to help build a
Russian version of Silicon Valley. The legacy Russian chip
companies have tended to retain strong Communist traditions, with skilled
engineers but inefficient management, older equipment, and weak marketing .
Chips were traditionally designed at these companies for military purposes, and
the designs have not kept up with the requirements of today's consumer-driven
markets.
 Dmitry Medvedev |
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"Silicon Valley" is to be created in Skolkovo near Moscow serving the interests
of both the government and business. The location in the Moscow region
already has a top-level business school which was founded by leading Russian
companies. Already, 200 innovation companies operate in the region.
One of the targets of acquisition is the French silicon foundry, Altis
Semiconductor. Altis was originally conceived and funded as a joint
project of IBM and Infineon Semicondutor in 1999. The company is
located in Corbeil-Essonnes, France and employs about 2 200 persons. Its
leading-edge technology offering includes advanced logic components down to 0.13
micron with Copper interconnects, eDRAM, mixed-signal and eFlash
components. In 2006, the organization underwent a radical restructuring to
reduce from 1420 wafers a day to 1015. Additional $22 million investment
was made (more than $1.5 billion invested to date).
In 2007, Infineon and IBM had enough and decided to sell the French asset and
announced a potential deal with Advanced Electronic Systems AG, a Swiss
affiliate of Russian-based holding company Global Information Services (GIS).
However, that deal fell through. Earlier, a deal with Russian chip maker,
Angstren, also failed because of the price of about $400 million was too
high. Meanwhile, Infineon was desperately seeking a buyer as it struggled
with its own financial issues.
It is rumored that the Russians are taking another look at this high-tech
prize -- most likely at a firesale discount. In 2009, Sistema, a
telecoms-to-oil conglomerate, considered buying a 51% stake in Infineon but the
German government did not approve the sale. It is believed that Altis dropped
its asking price by about 50% to unload the unit to Sistema. Sitronics,
which is one of Russia's important chip makers is part of the Sistema
organization. If the deal goes through it would give the chipmaker
advanced technology and a foothold in the European markets.
Another bidder in the mix is RUSNANO. The Russian Corporation of
Nanotechnologies (RUSNANO) was in September 2007. The mission of RUSNANO is to
advance Russia in the field of nanotechnology. The priority of RUSNANO is
commercialization of nanotechnology projects with high business potential and/or
social benefit. The company has about $5 billion under management, provided
solely by the Russian Government.