Even though AMD faced some backlash and had a hard time convincing regulatory bodies, they still managed to get official approval for the deal from every single application country, except China. China was being a little extra about it because Xilinx, being a Chinese company, meant that AMD could gobble it up and affect China’s efforts to reduce dependency on foreign silicon. From the original October 2020 announcement date of the deal, all the way up till the first quarter of 2022, China’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SMAR) kept investigating it to make sure it won’t be anti-competitive. Finally, after all that probing, Reuters is reporting that SMAR has agreed to approve the deal but under certain conditions. These conditions basically amount to China telling AMD to not force Xilinx customers to buy AMD products and vice-versa. Instead, both parties should work largely independent of each other. China wants to ensure “the flexibility and programmability of Xilinx FPGAs” and “that their development methods are compatible with ARM-based processor“. This is because China is heavily-invested in the market for ARM products and sees a future in becoming a major developer of them. With this confirmation, AMD’s merger with Xilinx should now have no barriers in between and the deal is as good as complete. AMD will of course commit to these six-year conditions as they don’t demand anything out of the ordinary and will the deal will prove more beneficial for the red team more than agreeing on these conditions could ever harm them. This will allow AMD to gain a stronghold in the FPGA market along with datacenters where AMD does not have a significant market share. The deal has already been approved in US, UK, and Europe and comes in the form of an all-stock deal. If you want to read the full statement from China’s regulatory authority, you can check it out here. We’ve attached the English-translated version of their statement below. In view of the fact that this concentration of operators in the CPU , GPU accelerator and FPGA markets has or may have the effect of eliminating or restricting competition, the State Administration for Market Regulation has decided to approve this concentration with additional restrictive conditions based on the commitment plan submitted by the declarer. Both parties to the transaction and the entity after concentration perform the following obligations: In addition to the supervision and implementation of restrictive conditions in accordance with this announcement, the commitment plan for additional restrictive conditions submitted by Chaowei to the State Administration for Market Regulation on January 13, 2022 is legally binding on both parties to the transaction and the entity after the concentration. From the effective date, both parties to the transaction and the entity after the concentration shall report the implementation of this commitment plan to the SAMR semi-annually. After 6 years from the effective date , the post-concentration entity may apply to the State Administration for Market Regulation to lift the conduct conditions. The State Administration for Market Regulation will make a decision on whether to cancel the application based on the application and market competition. Without the approval of the State Administration for Market Regulation , the entity should continue to fulfill the restrictive conditions after the concentration. The State Administration for Market Regulation has the right to supervise and inspect the performance of the above obligations by the two parties to the transaction and the entity after the concentration by supervising the trustee or by itself . If both parties to the transaction and the entity after the concentration fail to perform or violate the above obligations, the State Administration for Market Regulation will deal with it in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Anti-Monopoly Law. This decision will take effect from the date of the announcement. State Administration for Market Regulation
