Following the announcement of a consultation period prior to closing down Freescale's Irish design centre with the loss of 47 jobs, Freescale has now conceded that a sale of the company's fab at East Kilbride now looks 'unlikely' and that, while consultation continues, 'the focus will now be on the proposed closure of the fab' with the loss of 850 jobs.

However, there is hope for a further 140 jobs in the R&D department at East Kilbride. Newspaper reports say that Scottish Enterprise has been in negotiation with Freescale about keeping these jobs and some reports say Freescale has been recruiting R&D people to the site while the consultation process about closing the plant has been continuing.

It is believed that there are slightly more than 140 R&D staff at East Kilbride and that economic development agency Scottish Enterprise has been in discussions with Freescale in an attempt to ensure these posts remain.

According to Freescale's UK's corporate communications manager, Donna Reid: "The Business Groups currently operating in EKB are not impacted by the fab strategic options review." This is thought to mean the R&D operation.

It is believed that Freescale, while it has been looking for buyers for the fab, has been recruiting R&D staff.

Reid added: "We will continue to communicate with the Employee Forum and the entire employee population throughout the consultation process."

Freescale was spun out of Motorola in 2004 and taken off the New York stock exchange in late 2006 through a $17.6bn acquisition by private equity companies Blackstone, Texas Pacific, Carlyle and Permira.

At the time Freescale was bought, the then CEO of Xilinx said the sale would look 'very foolish' if the industry turned down, as it did, and almost he semiconductor industry thought the deal was vastly overpriced.

Subsequently Freescale was loaded up with $9.6bn of debt by its private equity owners. Freescale was badly hit when the volume of business it was getting from Motorola substantially declined when Motorola lost share in the cellphone market.

"I'm astounded at the assumptions made by the financial institutions buying Freescale", said Ray Bingham, former CEO of Cadence and managing partner at financial advisers Atlantic Capital, "great mistakes were made in under-estimating the vulnerability of Freescale to the performance of one large customer, the industry upturn was quite long in the tooth by the time the deal was done, and there was way too much leverage. It was not anybody's finest hour how that transaction was made."

Since Freescale's purchase, Blackstone and its partners have written down the value of Freescale in their books.

See also: Q5 - An Electronics Technician at Freescale Semiconductor's East Kilbride facility

See also: Mannerisms, the blog of David Manners. Updated twice daily, it's the distinctive, entertaining, authoritative and never dull commentary on the semiconductor industry, from someone who knows. Sign up for the Mannerisms eNewsletter.