NXP next as TI resets market values?

Peter Clarke, EETimes
4/6/2011 7:47 AM EDT

LONDON – Texas Instruments' proposed acquisition of National Semiconductor Corp. for $6.5 billion and at an 80 percent premium from where the stock was trading, must be setting some minds racing.

To offer to pay such a premium surely suggests that another party was nibbling at National Semiconductor and the move seems likely to reset the market's perception of the value of analog semiconductor activity. Meanwhile there are many that believe further consolidation in the semiconductor industry is overdue and that TI may have broken a long-jam that was holding back pent-up appetite.

NXP Semiconductors BV, the European chipmaker spun off from Koninklijke Philips Electronics NV by a private equity buy out in 2006, is one company that could now be caught up in the mix of interested consolidators, interested divestors and a revaluation of analog and mixed-signal activity.

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