Infineon and the State of Saxony are having a right old ding-dong over the proposed aid, offered by Saxony, to Infineon's 77 per cent owned DRAM maker subsidiary Qimonda.
The German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung has reported claims by Saxony that Infineon included a 'number of fictitious transactions in Infineon's and Qimonda's rescue plan for Qimonda, and that that Infineon 'had submitted different proposals to a number of individual negotiators'.
Infineon has now released a statement saying it 'emphatically rejects accusations which, the German daily newspaper "Süddeutsche Zeitung" stated on December 18, 2008, have been levelled at Infineon by national government circles and by the government of the state of Saxony'.
Claims that parent company Infineon included are false. 'Infineon is not in a position to intervene in the accounting of Qimonda, an independent, listed company', says the statement, 'the business plan presented by Qimonda was audited by two renowned firms, Price Waterhouse Coopers and Arthur D. Little. No accusations of the kind that "Süddeutsche Zeitung" states were raised in government circles were levelled at Infineon during the course of negotiations. The claim raised by the government of the state of Saxony is false. What is correct is that Infineon, during the course of the negotiations, improved and raised substantially its original offer of support for Qimonda.'
Infineon had previously fallen out with Saxony when an offer of a Euros 150m loan to save Qimonda was publicly made by the Saxon authorities stating it was on condition that Infineon matched the loan money with a similar sum.
Infineon retorted that it had already told Saxony that it was not in a position to match the Saxony offer and implied that Saxony had gone public with its offer to put Infineon in an embarrassing position.
It is all very reminiscent of the leaks and counter-leaks to the German press which went on when the Infineon Supervisory Board were trying to get former Infineon CEO, Dr Wolfgang Ziebart, to resign.
Behaviour that would have been normally thought exceptional for traditionally staid German industrial leaders was engaged in on an almost daily basis for weeks.
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