Potential M&A: Micron being pursued

I was heads down all day yesterday working on a few things. Apparently this is widely known now, but I saw it late last night. Micron is being pursued by a group affiliated with Tsinghua University. There is a political angle to this group, as they are connected to the government through their management. Why is this interesting (the acquisition potential that is). Well, there are 4 basic Flash fabs out there these days. Intel, Samsung, Micron, and Toshiba/Sandisk. If one of these goes away, there is less competition in market, which means higher prices. I had thought Intel and Micron had a tie up as well, but I am not sure the extent of this. The political aspect suggests a defense angle, but it looks more along the lines of a long term plan of owning strategic assets across important IT supply chains. That is, if you own your own fab, you can “prevent” people from “installing” bad things (&TM;) into your devices. The day job is working with Micron on a few things, so this has interesting implications for us. I’ve not fully thought it through yet, but I could imagine that a purchase would result in some of the non-core elements being discarded, sold off, or shut down. More interesting is what happens to folks like Convey whom were just purchased. They have interesting tech. I am sure the US government might not like it being excluded from them (just a guess).