Infineon sets sail with startup Catamaran

April 30, 2001- Munich, Germany – Infineon Technologies AG will acquire Catamaran Communications Inc., San Jose CA, a fabless optical IC startup. Infineon will pay $250 million in common stock for the company, which was founded in 1999.

“With this acquisition we are executing further on our strategy to strengthen Infineon’s leadership in communications,” explained Dr. Ulrich Schumacher, president and CEO of Infineon. “Combining our communications expertise with that of Catamaran will give us a competitive advantage in the fast growing optical networking market and a leading position in the high speed line card segment at speeds of 40 Gbps and beyond.”

Upon approval of the relevant authorities, Catamaran will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Infineon. This will allow it to maintain its start-up approach, while capitalizing on the synergies with Infineon’s existing wide area network, fiber optic and high-speed communication business units, an Infineon release said.

“Infineon and Catamaran share a common vision of the need to deliver high performance solutions that allow customers to bring leading edge communication systems to market in a timely manner,” said Subodh Toprani, president and CEO of Catamaran. “The complementary strengths of the two companies will provide true value to our customers by making more complete solutions available and supported worldwide.”

The optical network IC market is forecast to grow at an overall CAGR of 45% over the next four years, and is expected to reach annual sales of $16.17 billion by 2004, according to Cahners In-Stat group.

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