Mannerisms

While the rest of the worldwide chip industry has gone for mergers, gone fabless or gone for a Burton, the Japanese chip companies have, mostly, ploughed on regardless of global trends.

There's been the Hitachi-Mitsubishi alliance to create Renesas; the merger of the memory businesses of Hitachi and NEC to create Elpida; the process alliance between Matsushita and Renesas; and recently there've been the take-over of Sanyo Semiconductor by Matsushita, and the merger of some of Sony's semiconductor operations with Toshiba.

And that's about it.

Now there are reported to be talks between Renesas and NEC Electronics about a link-up.

This is a volte-face for NEC. Until quite recently, it had been assumed that NEC would get together with Toshiba. In January the Kyodo news agency in Tokyo reported that Toshiba-NEC talks were underway.

NEC has known for years it couldn't afford a 32nm fab. Now, with 32nm in use, it must take the partnership plunge. But, instead of Toshiba, it looks as if it may go in with Renesas.

Until recently Toshiba seemed to be the strongest semiconductor player in Japan. That changed when, last month, Toshiba said it had run up $20 billion in debt and $2.8 billion in 2008 losses.

The corporate boss went, to be replaced by a guy with a heavy electrical engineering background. The group was re-focussed on broadcasting equipment and power generation machinery. Investment in semiconductors was curtailed. There was talk of spinning off the semiconductor operation and looking for partners for it.

Suddenly NEC was scuttling off to cosy up to a new potential swain.

And NEC Electronics needs one because, for many years, it has had a stalker and, what's worse, a predatory American private equity stalker called Perry Capital which has tried to buy 25 per cent of NEC Electronics and get representation on its board.

Like any dutiful parent, NEC Corp put a stop to this shameless approach to its progeny. But NEC Electronics couldn't rely on paternal protection forever.

It needs a protective embrace. Unlike Toshiba, whose technological future is now uncertain, Renesas has developed, with its technology ally Matsushita, a leading capability, and maybe the world's leading capability, in process technology.

In the arms of Matsushita-Renesas-Sanyo, NEC will gain access to the life-blood of semiconductor success - leading-edge process technology - while its Yankee stalker will be locked, unrequited and unneeded, outside.

Well I know which I'd prefer.