Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton and Hogan Lovells have advised U.S. chip gear maker Applied Materials on its agreement to buy Japanese peer Kokusai Electric for $2.2 billion from KKR & Co Inc, with Nishimura & Asahi and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett counselling the sellers.

Goldman Sachs served as the exclusive financial adviser to Applied Materials, and it was represented by Sullivan & Cromwell.

According to Reuters, Applied Materials, one the world’s leading suppliers of machines used to make semiconductors, is betting on rising demand for memory chips used in data centres, 5G phones and AI-powered devices. The deal comes less than two years after KKR took control of Hitachi Kokusai in a $2.2 billion deal.

Kokusai, which counts Samsung, SK Hynix, Toshiba and Micron among its top customers, reported revenue of $1.24 billion as of March 2018, Reuters added.

The Nishimura team was led by partners Asa Shinkawa, Hideo Horikoshi, Takahiko Date and Makoto Shimizu.

 

To contact the editorial team, please email ALBEditor@thomsonreuters.com.

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