Some chinese forums stated that on next Monday july 23 SAMR(state admin for market regulation) will meetup for final Q/N deal decision, most probably deal will be approved accordingly as CHINA s is afraid of Deal failure effect on ZTE agreement with US.
Just wait guys and be ready for layoff storm.
I want to reply about SAMR and to point something extremely interesting. The anti-trust investigation was done by different bodies in China. From a public source: "Since implementation in August 2008, China’s Anti-Monopoly Law (AML) has been enforced by three different agencies: the Anti-Monopoly Bureau of the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) for merger control; the Price Supervision and Anti-Monopoly Bureau of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) for price-related infringements of the AML; and the Anti-Monopoly and Anti-Unfair Competition Enforcement Bureau of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC) for other infrigements of the AML. MOFCOM and the NDRC will survive but without antitrust powers. SAIC will be entirely integrated into SAMR and will no longer exist as it is known today."
A new step has now been taken with the effective move to SAMR of the merger control officials previously attached to MOFCOM. These officials have formally been acting under SAMR since early May, whilst in practice operating from their offices at MOFCOM. They will start working from SAMR’s premises on 14 May 2018. All administrative and procedural steps in relation to merger control (including filing of notification forms and documents) will be undertaken from these premises.
Okay, so now we know that since May 14th, SAMR is the body dealing with mergers and anti-trust. Not MOFCOM. What QCOM did? They officially announced on Apr 19th: "Qualcomm today announced that Qualcomm and NXP at the request of the Ministry of Commerce in China (MOFCOM) have withdrawn and refiled the notice of acquisition regarding the companies’ planned combination."
Whaaat? MOFCOM? Gents in the QCOM legal department, don't you know that MOFCOM is no longer legally able to look at and approve your merger file?
"ZTE bill is not about NXP but the ability of QCOM to sell chips to ZTE"
Not just QCOM but also GOOG and other American tech companies that sell to ZTE- ZTE would not be able to use latest Android OS and since they did not have any alternative mobile OS would have ceased soon. (There was lot of chatter about using Huawei/SS alternatives-and this kicked open hornet's nest on what China owns end to end). Basically death knell for ZTE.
So after $1B+ fine and most critically $500M investment to Trump Indonesia venture- swung the deal in ZTE's favor :-)
Any update on SAMR?
ZTE bill is not about NXP but the ability of QCOM to sell chips to ZTE. So, you math is totally wrong. By removing the ZTE ban, you get China able to buy american chips from QCOM and a 1 bil fine. Very expensive chips. If the ZTE ban would stay in place, ZTE will be done but the chips will be from MediaTek and Huawei, not from QCOM. So QCOM will also loose a lot of their business.
So it is 1-1.
To approve NXP-QCOM, China needs an argument why they should do it. And there is none on the table. Only threats of tarrifs on 500 bil of imports. Responding to threads by accepting their conditions is weakness.
@2ftg, u would be inclined to agree with you, but their strategic delay of the approval gave the same appearance of partiality didnt it?
I doubt it. If China gives approval now everyone will know it's because of the July 25 deadline, instead of being an impartial decision. Last thing China wants is to look like they're under pressure from a US company.
Confirmed
ZTE final hurdle is gone today with zte ban not present in the defense bill. Let’s wait for Monday and see how it goes.