Germany may prevent Chinese companies from buying Elmos chip factory

According to Reuters, Dortmund-based chip maker Elmos said the German government is likely to block Chinese companies from buying the Elmos chip factory.

The German economy ministry has reportedly been reviewing Elmos's sale of the plant to rival Silex, a controlled Swedish subsidiary of Saiwei Electronics.

Elmos said the deal is among "new developments" that "will likely be banned".

In fact, the German economy ministry had "represented to the parties that the deal is likely to be approved".

However, Elmos recently said it would review next steps "once the final assessment is received".

Germany's Elmos said in December it had agreed to sell its Dortmund-based chip factory to Silex Microsystems AB for a net purchase price of about 85 million euros ($85.28 million).

According to Wikipedia, Elmos is a German manufacturer of semiconductor products based in Dortmund, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, that provides application-specific integrated circuits for the automotive industry. It is reported that 90% of the chips produced by Elmos are used in the automotive industry. The company belongs to the second tier of chip companies, significantly smaller than Infineon, the world's largest automotive chip maker from Munich.