Hynix rejects bid for its non-memory biz

Hynix has rejected the latest offer US banking combine Citigroup has made for its non-memory business as "unacceptable", the South Korean manufacturer said today.

Negotiations between Citigroup Venture Capital (CVC), the bank's seed-investment division, and Hynix began last September after CVC submitted a letter of intent.

Non-memory products are believed to account for around 20 per cent of Hynix' 2002 sales and were worth $600 million.

"We have been engaged in talks for long to sell our non-memory operations to CVC, but we have decided to suspend the negotiations as our creditors have concluded that the terms, including the price, offered by CVC are unacceptable," Hynix said in a statement.

Instead, the company will consider other options, such as spinning the non-memory business off, or presumably finding an alternative buyer. CVC may yet come back with a revised offer, but the stark terms of Hynix' statement suggests that discussions between the two companies have gone as far as they can. ®

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