The past year was a record for the total cost of mergers and acquisitions in the semiconductor industry

Analyst firm IC Insights is set to release its 2020 semiconductor industry report later this month. It examines, in particular, the relevant mergers and acquisitions.

According to IC Insights experts, the past year was a record for the total cost of mergers and acquisitions in the semiconductor industry. This figure is estimated at $ 118.0 billion. It is noteworthy that the five largest deals accounted for $ 94 billion, or about 80% of the total for the year. The previous record was set in 2015, when the amount of transactions reached 107.7 billion dollars.

The wave of major deals began in July when Analog Devices announced the purchase of Maxim Integrated Products for $ 21 billion. Completion of the transaction is expected by the summer of 2021. Prior to the announcement of this purchase, the total value of such transactions since the beginning of 2020 was only $ 2.1 billion.

The next major deal was Nvidia’s $ 40 billion acquisition of Arm. This is the largest purchase in the history of the industry. It is expected to be completed by March 2022. This requires regulatory approval from the US, UK, European Union, South Korea, Japan and China.

In October 2020, Intel announced that it had sold its NAND flash business and Chinese factory for 300mm wafers to SK Hynix for $ 9 billion. AMD soon announced it was buying Xilinx for approximately $ 35 billion. The deal is scheduled to be completed by the end of this year. Finally, in late October, Marvell Technology announced its $ 10 billion acquisition of high-speed interconnect and mixed-signal IC provider Inphi. This transaction is expected to be completed in the second half of 2021.