Material Empire

Snyder, the CEO of Nice Semiconductor Company in the United Kingdom, was a nobleman with a title in his ancestors. Although the title has not been passed on to him, he has inherited that noble style meticulously. Even when Nice Company was declining day by day and his salary as the CEO had to be cut again and again, he still maintained a proud face like a black swan, facing the two yellow-skinned guests sitting in his office There is a spectrum of nobility.

"Two, please drink coffee. This is hand-ground with coffee beans from Santos. I'm not used to drinking machine-ground coffee. I think it has a smell of... coal." Snyder He greeted the guests, with a strong smell of fork in his tone.

"Thank you." Xiao Weihao from China's national security department nodded politely to Snyder, not minding the other's showing off.

"I very much agree with Mr. Snyder's point of view." This is Qin Hai, who has always disliked other people's pretentiousness. It feels more natural to grind it by hand, especially the machine driven by thermal electricity, the taste of the ground coffee is even worse. But if you use water and electricity, you can barely drink it..."

"Pfft!" Xiao Weihao almost spit out the coffee in his mouth, you are awesome, people just drink the smell of coal from the coffee ground by the machine, you can even taste thermal power and hydropower, you are really superior .

"Firepower..." Snyder was also choked by Qin Hai all of a sudden. He wanted to express a little anger at Qin Hai's teasing, but he couldn't say anything about it. It's just following his routine.

"The two of you said on the phone that you intend to take a stake in Nice Company, can you elaborate?"

After taking a few breaths, Snyder decided to put aside the coffee issue and directly cut into the topic of today's talk.

Qin Hai and Xiao Weihao flew from Beijing to Birmingham, an old industrial city in England, a week ago. After some peripheral understanding of the current situation of Nice Company, Qin Hai directly called Snyder and expressed his intention to participate in Nice Company. Snyder was worrying about the business prospects of Nice Company, and he couldn't help but be overjoyed to hear that someone was brave enough to take over. However, out of aristocratic reserve, he did not immediately agree to Qin Hai's request, but only invited Qin Hai and Xiao Weihao to his office for an interview.

Qin Hai's trip to England this time was originally aimed at Nice Company. Through his huge network abroad, he had heard the news that the Nice company was in trouble. Nice company is a powerful semiconductor manufacturer in the UK. Although it can only be regarded as a second-rate company compared with its international counterparts, its technology is definitely far ahead of Chinese companies. If such an enterprise can be included in the bag, it will be able to comprehensively improve China's overall semiconductor manufacturing level.

In many fields, it can be seen that a little-known foreign company has more advanced technology than the entire country of China. This is not because these companies are so great, but because they have the support of the entire Western world. Take Nice as an example, its high-purity monocrystalline silicon growth furnace, photolithography machine, ion implanter and other advanced equipment come from more than a dozen countries including the United States, Germany, Italy, Britain, France, and Sweden. equipment, if Chinese companies want to purchase it, it is absolutely impossible, and Western countries will use various excuses to obstruct it.

In the dictionaries of the Chinese industrialists, we often see a word called "restrained by others", which is a word precipitated from countless painful lessons. In order to avoid being controlled by others, China's equipment manufacturing industry often has to single out its peers all over the world with the power of one country, making up for its shortcomings one by one, until it becomes the only one in the world that has all the industrial categories in the United Nations industrial classification. s country.

Qin Hai came to Nice Company this time, the most direct purpose was to obtain the IGBT manufacturing process and related equipment in the hands of Nice Company, and the indirect purpose was to open a gap leading to the western semiconductor industry system through Nice Company.

Of course, Qin Hai also knew that it would be very difficult to eat Nice Company.

"Mr. Snyder, I heard that Nice Company has encountered some difficulties in its operation in the past three years. We want to see if we can do something for Nice Company." Qin Hai said in a tactful tone.

Snyder said arrogantly: "It is true that our company has experienced some temporary difficulties, as rumored by the outside world. However, these difficulties are nothing. We are currently adjusting, and I believe we will get out of the predicament soon. Restoring the splendor of Nice \u0026 Company."

"Really?" Qin Hai asked, "Is this your personal opinion, or is it the unanimous opinion of your company's board of directors?"

"Mr. Qin, what does this mean?" Snyder looked at Qin Hai with his small eyes and asked back.

Qin Hai smiled and said, "In the past few days, Mr. Xiao and I have also visited several friends in Birmingham, among whom are the directors of your company. According to them, the board of directors is not optimistic about your company's prospects."

"This is just someone's opinion." Snyder replied with some embarrassment. "The difficulty that the company is currently encountering is that the speed of technology development is somewhat lagging behind. Once the technology is completed, our difficulties will be quickly resolved.”

"Oh, is that so?" Qin Hai said calmly. He knew that Snyder's purpose of saying this was just to give himself more weight in the negotiation. The problems that Nice Company is facing now are not at all like Snyder's. As simple as it is said, it is definitely not possible to bring in a little capital to bring this company back to life.

The problem of Nice Company is actually a common problem faced by all small and medium-sized semiconductor manufacturing enterprises in the world. With the development of semiconductor technology, scale effect has a greater impact on the competitiveness of semiconductor products. Semiconductor companies either continue to expand their scale in order to reduce costs, or they can only linger in some market segments, waiting to be squeezed out or merged by large companies.

Nice company had some technical strength in the past, relying on several advanced technologies, it did live quite well. However, due to the lack of foresight of market changes and failure to keep up with the pace of technological change in time, the market of Nice Company began to shrink continuously, and finally suffered consecutive losses. Under such circumstances, if Nice Company wants to revive, it must find a large investor, inject no less than 200 million U.S. dollars in funds, fully update equipment, and improve technology, otherwise any small investment will be worthless. It's just a waste of time.

Using the contacts accumulated at the Global Materials Annual Conference, Qin Hai learned about the current situation of Nice Company from several semiconductor experts, and also knew that it is almost impossible for such a company to find an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in the capital market . In Qin Hai's eyes, Nice Company is a treasure; and for Western investors, there are many semiconductor companies with more investment value than Nice Company, who is willing to throw money into this pit?

A few days ago, Qin Hai targeted several major shareholders of Nice Company to understand their attitude towards Nice Company. The answers of these major shareholders are almost the same, that is, they have completely lost confidence in Nice Company, and they hope to sell them early in order to recover some of their share capital.

With such information, Qin Hai is naturally not afraid of Snyder's tricks. Qin Hai didn't care about the other party's flamboyance because of his personality. He knew that it wasn't these little tricks that determined the outcome of the negotiation, but real money.

"Mr. Snyder, how much additional investment do you estimate your company needs to get out of the current difficulties?" Qin Hai asked.

"This..." Snyder was speechless. He just said that he could get out of trouble just by injecting a little money. Now facing Qin Hai's question, he didn't know how to answer it.

Let’s talk about a small amount, in fact, it is not enough to solve the problem, and will eventually miss an opportunity to attract investment.

Speaking of a real number is equivalent to slapping oneself in the face, which will make the two guests feel contemptuous of themselves. More importantly, in this way, the company's plight is clearly revealed, and it will be passive in subsequent negotiations.

"I think... we need about $20 million... Of course, it would be better if there were more." Snyder replied hesitantly.

"20 million US dollars?" Qin Hai sneered, "The IGBT chips currently produced by your company use 400-micron thick silicon wafer technology, but today's mainstream trend is thin silicon wafer technology below 100 microns. Production, your company needs to update all monocrystalline silicon growth equipment, can these equipment be bought with a mere 20 million US dollars?"

"This..." Snyder was dumbfounded. He originally thought that the Chinese people didn't know much about IGBT technology, so he just said what he said. Unexpectedly, the young man in front of him could see the technology trend clearly, and even the equipment status of the company had been changed. I figured out that my pretentiousness was purely a monkey show in the eyes of others.

"Mr. Qin is right. We are indeed considering the introduction of thin silicon wafer technology. Of course, it would be best if we have enough funds to introduce the corresponding equipment. What I just said is based on our current situation. We want to do some more technology development on thick silicon," Snyder said. What he said was not entirely a lie, because limited by the company's financial constraints, Nice's technology department is indeed currently developing thick silicon wafer technology, although this can only be regarded as a repair of outdated technology.

Qin Hai said bluntly: "Thick silicon wafers are costly and complicated. At present, Siemens, Toshiba, IR, SGS and other companies have clearly stated that they will give up this technology. Your company will continue to make a fuss about thick silicon wafers." , but a waste of money.”