US gov't blocks China's largest LED chipmaker's $239 million bid to acquire Dutch lighting firm Lumileds — US blocks acquisition attempt of European firm

Can I please get a skinny on what is happening?

Billionaires just buying up the world. Somethings gotta give.

Canada: “first time?” Everyone seems to be selling to two countries now and it’s absolutely terrifying.

Another big problem is, that even European big money (like banks, central banks and governmental stock funds) are not willing to invest into europe.

Offshoring to America makes no sense lol, the labor costs are significantly expensive here. China/India/SE Asia makes sense, that's where all of America's jobs are going to

Your politicians are paid off to sell off assets?

Not entirely the same thing. Yes, we have some rules in the single market. For example food safety standards. If you want to sell your stuff on our market, you need to adhere to these rules. Strategic interests however should always be protected. If we sell it to another country meaning we could lose our interest over it, we simply shouldn't sell it. In the case of the software: the US has this rule that it can access any data from US companies if needed. So we would be mad to give this software company to the US, where the only question will be *when* another state (the US) will look into Dutch citizens files. That has nothing to do with the cost of doing business, its just incredibly stupid.

Quite uninformed comment. Cymer is owned by ASML. This entire machine is full of products only a single company can make. Cymer for the (DUV, old version) light source, Zeiss for the lenses and Trumpfh for the laser.

this would absolutely be cutting off our nose to spite your face. Besides the fact that ASML machines are already subject to US export controls, it takes about 30 seconds to figure out why this would be catastrophic for everybody, the US included. It's true that the US can already make the light sources through Cymer, which is arguably the most difficult part. But it still took 20 years for the machine to be developed, including nearly 10 years *after* they already had a working light source. Even if we assume that onshoring it would go faster because we broadly know how it's done (which ASML didn't, they had to develop it all from scratch), it would take at the absolute minimum a decade between starting development and actually being able to deploy a machine, and more realistically 15+ years. Even laying aside whether it would be a reasonable and fair thing to do given that ASML developed the machines when the US manufacturers gave up on it (granted, they got a lot of US government money over the years to keep the project alive), it just isn't a realistic possibility in any reasonable amount of time.

I don't think you understand what I'm saying very well.

Got it. So if Lumineds had no such connections to the US then the CFIUS would have no say?

Hoover, Gavin Belson’s head of security on the tv show *Silicon Valley* used CFIUS to great effect to stop Foxhole, an Ashley-Madison style dating app, from being sold to a foreign company. I had no idea it was a real law.

Because EU victimhood. And anything EU is sacred on listnook.

Yes and the purchasing company can probably find some synergistic combination with its existing assets/portfolio.

Thank you for the input. I didn't know that. Although I though, that falls under the antitrust law.

Mental experiment: If you like the economic system of China, why would you want them to grow instead of adapting and applying their system to yours?

It’s an investment for the Chinese economy. They buy only for the ip and knowledge. As soon as they are done, they drop the company. Edit: Look at Osram or the whole german „Mittelstand“.

We've seen multiple times now that companies being bought by China, the knowledge is stripped and production being moved abroad. Not in every case, but for strategic recourses this is definitely the case.

From a country that supplies 90% of Russia's electronics used in weapons against Ukraine

With china that's just asking for your shit to be stolen. Its not an investment

except the war on Iran which will upend the global power balance but go off.

Still better than an orange demented warmongering pedo

All of em? Damn, those are pretty tough odds.

Lumileds was originally a joint venture between Philips and an American firm, which is why so much of their operations/assets are in the US, which is why the US blocking acquisition of that part of the business kills the deal.