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IBM Pays GlobalFoundries $1.5 Billion To Shed Its Chip Division

Posted by timothy on from the watson-told-them-to dept.

helix2301 writes with word that Big Blue has become slightly smaller: IBM will pay $1.5 billion to GlobalFoundries in order to shed its costly chip division. IBM will make payments to the chipmaker over three years, but it took a $4.7 billion charge for the third quarter when it reported earnings Monday. The company fell short of Wall Street profit expectations and revenue slid 4 percent, sending shares down 8 percent before the opening bell.

5 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. Bigger fuckup than John Akers by gelfling · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ginni is a bigger fuckup than John Akers. She and her cronies are fucking pirates running IBM like it's a stolen treasure box and they will personally enrich themselves until there's nothing left. Roadkill 2015 was the plan and everyone knew it was 100% bullshit. At this point all they can do is fire everyone who's not an executive, in the US, re incorporate in a developing nation and sell off the entire company piecemeal. IBM is a poorly run investment fund that simply buys and sells smaller companies to dig as much cash out of them as possible then tossing them away.

    Paying someone to take a division off your hands? Are you fucking serious? THAT's better than simply taking that money and investing it into the division? Holy the server division just sold to Lenovo must be happy. They'll have a viable business with actual jobs whereas IBM is too busy borrowing money to buy back stock price with no revenue to pay off the debt.

    1. Re:Bigger fuckup than John Akers by hendrips · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I can't speak for any of IBM's other decisions, but in this case I have to strongly disagree with you. The IBM semiconductor business has been losing money hand over fist recently. They can't compete with Samsung or TSMC on price and volume, and there's not enough interest in specialty chips or POWER to make up the slack. It costs at minimum $5 billion to build a new fab, and IBM would have to build at least one, maybe two new fabs, not to mention updating their existing fabs, in order to be competitive with the big guys.

      So, IBM could spend $5 billion - $10 billion just to catch up to their competitors, and still be at a very serious risk of the division being unprofitable, or they could spend $1.3 billion knowing for certain that the bleeding will stop. I only wonder what took them so long.

      Also, for what it's worth, IBM is allegedly doing this deal in part so that it can focus more money into design research. They've announced a $3 billion investment into their semiconductor research division, which they aren't getting rid of. The implication is that the manufacturing division was crowding out any other R&D spending, and that IBM can now focus on high margin ARM-style licensing instead of getting dragged further into a war with TSMC et al. that they would inevitably lose.

  2. Re:so... by Greyfox · · Score: 5, Informative

    They're really good at outsourcing and cutting employee benefits. Eventually they'll be down to one employee who's outsourced through 15 different countries and actually pays them to work there. Then they'll be the most profitable company in the world!

    --

    I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

  3. Need to remove the M from IBM by sasparillascott · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Probably need to change the name to IBC and drop the M as they are rapidly on that road to not really building/creating anything anymore - and just being another offshoring consulting firm (once they offshore the managers they could change it to Indian Business Consultants).

  4. Re:so... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is in my experience accurate. IBM is one of the larger purveyors of wage arbitrage in the market.

    From time to time over the past 15 years I have been subbed into IBM to fix things. Currently I am working as a developer fixing a real mind boggling mess. The code base for this product is almost entirely now sourced from China, with some Indians and a few Brazilians thrown in for good measure. Oh sure, the project is fronted by English speakers from the USA for the purposes of sales, but the actual work is all done for bottom dollar anywhere BUT the USA ... until deadlines are missed, features are forgotten and things start to fall apart.

    Then they hire people like me for 200+/hr to rewrite it all again.

    It turns out that when you translate requirements through 3 language and cultural filters then pay the developers 4 bucks an hour you get shit code. Who knew right?