The
buyer for the French semiconductor company Altis is a Russian state owned
arms dealer.
The deal at between 300 million euro and 500 million euro
was revealed by IBM and Infineon Technologies but at the time they said that
the purchaser was AES.
However according to the Kommersant newspaper
AES is owned by a Russian holding company called Global Information Services,
with offices in Moscow and Miami.
This appears to be owned by
Rosoboronexport State Corp. The website for the company is www.rusarm.ru
Rosoboronexport
sells tanks, MIG fighter aircraft, surface warships and submarines,
long-range air defense missile systems, radar and electronic warfare and
electronic countermeasures systems.
Altis made logic chips at 250-nm and
130-nm and R&Ded magnetic RAM and conductive-bridging RAM. It is possible
that Rosoboronexport could use Altis to contribute to the development of
electronics systems in VAZ automobiles.
More 2000 people work at Altis
Semiconductor's 55-hectare wafer fab site at Corbeil-Essonnes south of
Paris.
More
here.