Hitachi Ltd. (Japan) and Mitsubishi Electric Corp. (Japan) announced that they will merge several of their semiconductor operations into a new company in an attempt to boost profitability. The new company, Renesas Technology Corp., will be formed in April 2003.
Renesas will be capitalized at 50 billion yen ($409.84 million), with Hitachi contributing 55 percent and Mitsubishi 45 percent. Renesas will have 27,200 workers and is expected to earn at least 900 billion yen ($7.38 billion) in its first year. One of the key operations being merged is the production of "system large-scale integrated" or LSI circuits, a kind of semiconductor used in mobile phones and digital appliances.
