If Dr Wolfgang Ziebart was the kind of guy to indulge in schadenfreude, which I don't for one moment think he is, he would be feeling that he's well out of Infineon whose shares dropped to 1 euro yesterday.
Ziebart was a good CEO of Infineon. He led his engineers to notable engineering and market achievements, particularly in the highly competitive automotive and wireless markets.
Encouraged by his engineering-led leadership, Infineon has many good, dedicated people trying to do what is right for the company.
These people have been grossly let down by the people responsible for financial decision-making at Infineon.
The supervisory board has failed to find a solution to the Qimonda problem. Ziebart had led the effort to get Qimonda separately listed on the New York Stock Exchange at a difficult time for IPOs but, despite this, the Infineon supervisory board seem to have found no way to decrease Infineon's holding in Qimonda, a holding which is now dragging both Infineon and Qimonda to destruction.
Qimonda is facing bankruptcy but, if it goes bankrupt, Infineon could face legal actions for, says the company: 'Antitrust and securities law claims, the potential repayment of government subsidies received and employee-related contingencies'.
Next year, Infineon has to repay corporate bonds worth nearly 1.0 billion euros. It is difficult to see how these can be repaid without refinancing but, as Jerome Ramel of BNP Paribas told the European Nanoelectronics Forum 2008 in
Analysts reckon Infineon has not got a case to support re-financing.
Without the option of re-financing, said Ramel, consolidation is the only answer. But consolidation with who?
Infineon's new CEO, Peter Bauer, is rumoured to be in favour of a private equity deal, but, after the debacles of NXP and Freescale, it is doubtful that the private equity industry still sees the semiconductor industry as a predictable generator of positive cash-flow.
Especially now that Infineon sees sales dropping 30 per cent this quarter, 15 per cent next year, and has posted a 3 billion euro loss for the year.
So, in the unlikely event of finding another pair of suckers as gullible as Blackstone and KKR to buy the company, Infineon does not seem to have many options.
I think you've been spammed again. Although maybe Infineon could do with debt help services I suspect the one linked to by this person is not in that league :-)