Taipei, Aug. 18, 2010 (CENS)--Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc. (ASE), reportedly the world`s No.1 chip assembler, recently announced its US$67.68 million acquisition of Singapore factory of EEMS, a European chip assembler split from a Texas Instruments (TI) memory unit.

ASE executives estimated the factory to bring in their company US$50 million of sales a year.

The acquisition is ASE`s another significant investment after acquiring Universal Scientific Industrial Co., Ltd. and its second acquisition of chip assembler in Singapore following the procurement of J&R Holding Ltd.

Industry executives estimated that the acquisition would allow ASE to take over EEMS`s customers contracting the Singapore factory, including Broadcomm and Micron.

People familiar with the deal pointed out that aggressive expansion plans in Singapore by heavyweight chipmakers like United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC), GlobalFoundries and Infineon AG are the foremost reason behind ASE`s acquisition. As soon as these expansions are completed, the chip-making factories will need huge amount of packaging and testing service.

The Singapore factory was formerly held by an Asian venture co-opened in 2005 by EEMS and testing-equipment supplier Ellipsiz, which still runs a similar factory in Suzhou of mainland China.

Sale of the Singapore factory is part of EEMS`s restructuring project, which was presented following the collapse of chipmaker Qimonda of Germany in the 2008 financial tsunami. Qimonda`s testing and packaging contracts had long filled the majority of EEMS`s testing and packaging capacity before going under.

Last year, the Singapore factory raked in revenue of around 31.3 million euros, which contained 2.05 million euros of net profit.

ASE will take over ownership of the Singapore factory through the wholly owned ASE Singapore Pte. Ltd.

(by Ken Liu)