AMD's $35B Bid For FPGA Juggernaut Xilinx Hits A Small Regulatory Speed Bump
AMD has given its investors a heads up that its planned acquisition of Xilinx, a powerhouse in field-programmable gate array (FPGA) semiconductors, will not be complete by the end of this year as originally anticipated. Apparently it is taking a bit longer to satisfy regulatory concerns, though AMD says it is making "good progress" on those talks and expects to finalize the deal in the first quarter of next year.
If so, this amounts to a rather small delay in what could turn out to be a very big deal. Not just financially—the all-stock transaction is worth around $35 billion—but it could mean for AMD and the tech industry at large. It would diversify AMD's product portfolio in a major way, and could potentially lead to some interesting designs.
"We continue making good progress on the required regulatory approvals to close our transaction. While we had previously expected that we would secure all approvals by the end of 2021, we have not yet completed the process and we now expect the transaction to close in the first quarter of 2022. Our conversations with regulators continue to progress productively, and we expect to secure all required approvals," AMD said in a statement.
The brief statement is the only new information at this point. However, AMD did also confirm that there have been no changes to the previously announced terms or plans regarding the buyout. That can be taken as a good sign, as it probably means the ongoing regulatory talks are just a matter of crossing all the t's and dotting all the i's.
That said, it's also worth noting that AMD has cleared every regulatory hurdle outside of China, so who knows if tensions with the US are playing a role. AMD does not sound all the concerned, however, as it anticipates the delay to be no longer than three months.
