Silver Lake invests in China's Spreadtrum

LONDON — Private equity firm Silver Lake (Menlo Park, Calif.) has acquired a minority stake in Spreadtrum Communications Inc. (Shanghai, China), a NASDAQ-traded fabless chip company that makes chips for GSM and TD-SCDMA mobile communications.

The size of the investment, Silver Lake's first in a China-based company, was not disclosed.

"We are very pleased to have Silver Lake become not only one of the largest shareholders of our company, but also an important strategic partner," said Leo Li, president and CEO of Spreadtrum, in a statement.

Eric Chen, managing director at Silver Lake, said, "We believe Spreadtrum will be a key enabler of China's home-grown 3G national wireless standard, representing the power of technological innovation in the Chinese economy." He added, "The management team has put the company on a convincing growth trajectory and we are excited about Spreadtrum's prospects as China becomes home to globally competitive fabless semiconductor players over the coming decade. We are committed to working with the company to seek transformative growth opportunities."

Related links and articles:

KKR writes NXP down to 10 percent of purchase price

Spreadtrum cuts jobs, posts loss

Top ten ranking of Chinese chip design houses