Rebirth Tokyo 1986

Chapter 102 The arrival of good news
There have been frequent good news about the acquisition of radio factories, and there is also hope for the 6-inch wafer factory.

Hitachi revealed that it is willing to sell a 6-inch wafer factory, but the price is a bit high, requiring 180 billion yen.

At this price, I am still considering Yasuo Tarui's face.

Without his help in mediation, Hitachi would have dared to raise the price to over 300 billion.

The vast majority of the world's wafer fabs are concentrated in Japan, and Japan's wafer fabs are mainly concentrated in the hands of a few giants.

If Masato Takeshita doesn't want to build from scratch, he can only spend more money.

"Tarifuku-senpai, agree to Hitachi's request. But there is one condition: Senior Koike Junyoshi must be among the employees of the wafer factory."

After the establishment of Xinghai Semiconductor, Masato Takeshita continued to look for talents. Waseda University, as his alma mater, was the place he visited most often.

He met this interesting senior, Junyoshi Koike, through the Waseda University platform.

This person is an outlier in the Japanese chip industry because Masato Takeshita said he wanted to enter the chip foundry industry.

Among all the senior students of Waseda University of Science and Technology, he was the only one who did not laugh at Masato Takeshita's ideas, but instead consulted seriously and agreed with his ideas.

He is one of the very few experts in the world who is recognized in the chip foundry industry.

Masato Takeshita wanted to poach him to take charge of Xinghai Semiconductor's chip foundry business.

"Koike Junyi?"

"Well, Senior Koike graduated from Waseda University of Science and Technology and is a mid-level leader at Hitachi Semiconductor. They shouldn't stop us."

"Okay, I'll try my best."

"Thank you. I'll trouble you, Senior Tarui."

"It's nothing. I'm paid."

Although Yasuo Tarui helped voluntarily, Masato Takeshita could not take it for granted.

A week ago, Masato Takeshita directly stuffed a check of 2 million yen into Senior Tarui's hand to thank him for his help in poaching Fujio Masuoka's team.

If the wafer factory project is successful again, Masato Takeshita will still present a check for the same amount.

Wafer fabs require a large amount of water, and it must be stable, so most wafer fabs are built in relatively remote areas.

The next morning, he took Fujio Masuoka and others, as well as senior Yasuo Tarui, to Hitachi's wafer factory in Hitachi City, Ibaraki Prefecture.

“Is this Hitachi’s wafer factory?”

"Yes, a little disappointed."

"No, I still know this."

The equipment in the wafer fab is very bulky and requires very high stability.

Therefore, most wafer fabs adopt a one-story building model, which does not look very developed.

Only TSMC is special in that it adopts a two-story building.

This is not because TSMC has any advanced technology, but it has no choice but to do so.

TSMC's wafer foundry business is considered impossible to succeed abroad and will go bankrupt sooner or later, and the same is true for local governments in China.

The site provided to TSMC in Hsinchu Science Park is very small and the roads are very narrow.

TSMC was forced to raise the floor height, with offices on the second floor and wafer production on the first floor.

The requirements of the wafer factory are very high. Masato Takeshita and his team put on the clothes provided by Hitachi, and went through disinfection and dust removal before they officially entered the core area of the wafer factory.

However, Masato Takeshita didn't understand, so he just watched Fujio Masuoka and others busy themselves.

In addition, there are experts invited by Masato Takeshita through his connections at Waseda University who are responsible for conducting a comprehensive review of the wafer factory.

This is a project worth over 100 million US dollars, so we must be extremely careful.

"Brother Xiaochi, how about working with me? Then you can temporarily serve as my deputy, and directly take over the foundry business in a few years." "Okay, I couldn't ask for more."

Junyoshi Koike was very interested in wafer foundry, and since he could get promoted several levels by switching to Xinghai Semiconductor, he decisively accepted Masato Takeshita's invitation.

"Welcome, welcome. I believe that under the leadership of Brother Xiaochi, our wafer foundry industry will have a brilliant future."

"You are exaggerating, junior. I don't know enough about wafer fabs now. I need to learn for a few more years at least."

"It doesn't matter. The OEM business is not urgent now."

Before the bubble burst, Xinghai Semiconductor's wafer foundry projects and flash memory projects were in a latent stage.

Xinghai Semiconductor will have the best opportunity for development only when Japan's economy goes into recession and the United States relaxes its surveillance of Japan.

Especially the wafer foundry project, which can take over the leftover materials from many Japanese semiconductor giants.

The economy is in recession and everyone has to tighten their belts. In the past, people thought that if they lost money on low-end chips, they would just have to bear the loss, and there were still high-end chips that could make money.

That won’t work now, it needs to be cleaned up immediately.

"Brother, do you know why Hitachi wants to sell its wafer fab?"

"Nothing, there's too much chip inventory, and some of the wafer factories here are idle."

Japan is actually also a good player in counter-cyclical activities. Taking advantage of the semiconductor recession, it built many 6-million-dollar wafer factories.

But it is clear that Hitachi underestimated the recession period of the semiconductor industry and did not want to continue losing money.

"I see. No wonder."

"Come to think of it, asking Tarui-senpai for help was a good move."

"If it weren't for Tarui-senpai's help, our company would not have been sold even if it was idle."

Hitachi is making so much money now that it doesn't care about the temporary losses from the wafer factory project.

Other semiconductor companies in Japan had the same idea, which was why it was so difficult for him to buy a wafer fab.

"Yes, financing is so easy nowadays that no one cares about losses."

"It's not just this reason. The wafer factory here has been mortgaged by our company. Then stock speculation not only made up for the losses, but also made more profits."

After the bubble era began, the most profitable businesses of many Japanese companies shifted into the financial sector.

Take Toyota as an example. The money earned from finance has exceeded that from its main business, automobiles.

The rest of the companies, big and small, are basically the same.

"Well, it's Hitachi after all."

Masato Takeshita actually had a similar idea, which was to buy the wafer factory and then mortgage it.

Then use the money from stock trading to cover the losses, or even make back the costs.

"The stock market is so profitable, so it's natural for our company to get involved."

"Not only us, but also companies like Fujitsu and NEC use similar methods to make money."

Japan's nationwide stock speculation is not just talk, it is similar to China's nationwide real estate speculation in later generations, and many companies rely on this business to survive.

The inspection of the wafer factory takes a lot of time, so Masato Takeshita directly entrusted all the subsequent work to senior Yasuo Tarui.

He returned to Tokyo with Fujio Masuoka.

Compared with wafer fabs, flash memory chips are more valuable.

If it wasn't for reassuring everyone, he would never have brought Fujio Masuoka with him.

(End of this chapter)