OCT. 7–TOKYO–Hitachi, Ltd. and Mitsubishi Electric Corp. have reached an agreement to establish a new semiconductor company, Renesas Technology Corp., which will focus on large scale integration (LSI).

The new company will be established on April 1, 2003, and will aim to be a semiconductor manufacturer, working as an intelligent chip provider, supporting system partners on a global basis. This agreement is a result of discussions to combine system LSI businesses, which were agreed to on last March.

Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electric will take advantage of the special provisions for corporate reorganization under the Japanese Commercial Code to jointly establish a new company and will move both companies’ semiconductor operations to the new company, including microcomputer, logic, analog and discrete devices and memory (flash memory, SRAM etc.) with the exception of DRAMs. The new company will be established following Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electric’s completion of the legal procedures for corporate split.

The plans are to appoint Dr. Koichi Nagasawa, presently executive vice president of Semiconductor, Mitsubishi Electric as chairman and chief executive, and Satoru Ito, presently president and CEO of Hitachi Semiconductor & Integrated Circuits as President chief operating officer.

Upon establishment of the new company, the sales/service divisions and companies in Japan will be integrated. This will create a single, end-to-end operation of development, design and manufacturing to sales and service, allowing system solutions to be provided based on the customer’s point of view.