Cypress Semiconductor took a big step Wednesday in its battle to acquire Silicon Valley chip maker Integrated Silicon Solution Inc. (ISSI.)
ISSI said that Cypress had agreed to its terms and that it has finalized an agreement to be acquired by Cypress.
Now a competing group of acquirers, Chinese private equity firm Uphill Investment, has four days to top Cypress offer of $20.25 a share, or about $695 million. The companies topped one another in bids and counter-bids, but Uphill has not been heard from since Cypress last offer.
Uphill s last offer was $20 a share, which would come to about $687 million, according to ISSI securities filings.
Cypress has agreed to take all reasonable actions to obtain regulatory approvals and to divset ISSI s SRAM memory business if required. Cypress and ISSI are the number one and number two makers of SRAM, which has raised concerns that the merger might not get approval from anti-trust regulators.
The deadline for Uphill to come through with a better offer is June 14 at 5 p.m. A board vote on is being rescheduled to June 19 at the earliest, ISSI said.
A deal with Uphill was all but sealed in March by ISSI, but Cypress emerged with a higher offer and complained that it hadn t been invited to bid for the San Jose chip company.
That angered ISSI s largest shareholder, Starboard Value, which had been pressuring ISSI to sell itself.
At this point, ISSI could get a 50-cent higher offer from Uphill, said Gary Mobly, an analyst with Benchmark. It s great for ISSI shareholders, great for Starboard.
Photo: ISSI logo (ISSI)
