President Donald Trump will decide whether to block a China-backed fund from buying Lattice Semiconductor Corp. after U.S. national security officials opposed the takeover.

Lattice said Friday in a regulatory filing that the companies weren’t able to resolve concerns raised by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., which reviews foreign acquisitions of American companies for national security risks. CFIUS will now send the $1.3 billion deal to Trump for the final word on whether it should proceed. The president has 15 days to make a decision. 

Lattice said it hopes the president will allow the merger to go forward because the company and the China-backed fund, Canyon Bridge Capital Partners LLC, have proposed mitigation measures to resolve national security risks.

“Lattice remains of the view that the proposed transaction does not raise any national security concerns that cannot be addressed by the comprehensive mitigation measures that Lattice and Canyon Bridge have proposed to implement,” the company said in the filing.

A rejection of the deal by the Trump administration would frustrate China’s bid to develop its semiconductor know-how amid the biggest wave of consolidation in the history of the $300 billion industry. China, the largest market for chips, has been on the hunt for acquisitions in the field as it looks to build a domestic supply and rely less heavily on imports.

The U.S. has portrayed China’s investment push -- $150 billion over 10 years -- as a risk to U.S. national security. Lattice is one of the few makers of programmable logic chips, which have a wide variety of uses because their attributes can be changed using software. Such semiconductors are frequently used in components for military communications.

By: DocMemory
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