AMD's acquisition of Xilinx delayed!

As originally planned, AMD was hoping to complete its $35 billion acquisition of Xilinx in December 2021.

However, according to the latest statements from both companies, they are on track to receive regulatory approval in the first quarter of 2022. Even so, AMD and Xilinx are feeling quite optimistic. They anticipated this scenario when they announced the deal back in October 2020, and disclosed it in an overview to investors.

In an interview earlier this year, AMD CEO Lisa Su said that completing the Xilinx acquisition was one of her main goals for 2021. But she has also reiterated her optimism over the past few months, indicating that regulators in both the U.K. and the U.S. have approved the deal. For now, the slight delay is just a matter of time .

Under the deal, Ceres shareholders will receive about 1.7 shares of AMD common stock for each share of common stock, which means Ceres' per-share purchase price comes to $143. After the merger, AMD shareholders' equity will be 74 percent and Ceres shareholders 26 percent.

After the merger of the two companies, Zifeng Su will serve as the CEO of the combined company, and Victor Peng, CEO of Ceres, will serve as president, responsible for Ceres' business and strategic growth plans, and the merger deal will save both companies $300 million in costs.

AMD has long been Intel's main competitor in the CPU market, and since Zifeng took over as AMD CEO in 2014, it has continued to challenge Intel in the fast-growing data center market, while Ceres is committed to entering the data center market with programmable chips that help accelerate film compression or provide specialized tasks such as digital encryption.

AMD entered the second phase of the approval process in China in July . Earlier this month, news broke that AMD had submitted certain undefined "behavioral remedies" to convince Chinese regulators. By mid-month, sources said that China's anti-monopoly agency, the State Administration of Market Regulation (SAMR), was still conducting a market analysis of AMD's proposed remedies.

AMD's acquisition of Xilinx comes at a time of heightened tensions between the U.S. and China as they have become embroiled in the trade war. However, China's recent approval of Intel's sale of its NAND and SSD business to SK Hynix suggests that such a merger is still possible, albeit with some restrictions.

Meanwhile, Nvidia's proposed $40 billion acquisition of Arm nearly died due to regulators, but the deal is facing challenges in nearly all regions due to widespread concerns about potential anti-competitive behavior.