Court-appointed administrators to sound out investors for Nexperia stake amid Wingtech feud

The two court-appointed administrators overseeing Nexperia said on Thursday they would sound out investors on a majority or minority stake in the Dutch chipmaker, a week after its Chinese owner Wingtech rejected their proposal to hand control of its operations outside China to foreign investors.

“We have decided to assess market interest in possible long-term solutions for Nexperia,” Guido Dierick and Arnold Croiset van Uchelen said in a statement.

“No decision has currently been taken to reduce Wingtech’s ownership interest,” they said, adding that the Dutch Enterprise Chamber has confirmed it is within their authority to do so and that Wingtech should not interfere with the process.

The authorisation from the Dutch court marks a shift from January, when van Uchelen told the court during a hearing that it was not up to him to decide on a possible sale of Nexperia, since Wingtech still owned the company, even though parties interested in taking it over had come forward.

In the Thursday statement, the administrators said they were not preparing for a sale of a majority stake to outside investors or seeking to divide Nexperia into Chinese and non-Chinese businesses. They placed blame for the current de facto separation within Nexperia on Wingtech and Nexperia China.

The Dutch Enterprise Chamber confirmed in a ruling on Wednesday that Wingtech’s actions undermined the court’s earlier orders, according to the statement.

Dierick and van Uchelen said their discussions with Wingtech about possible solutions were supposed to be confidential and that they regretted the Chinese firm’s decision to make them public.

In a public statement last week, Wingtech rejected the restructuring proposal, which would have seen the Chinese firm lose control of Nexperia’s assets outside China, calling it an “expropriation” driven by discrimination.

The court-appointed custodians pushed back in their statement, saying that giving in to Wingtech’s demand to regain control would create “serious risks to Nexperia’s ability to continue operating”, given export controls and other policies being introduced in several major countries where the chipmaker does business. They added that the Dutch court had confirmed that they could take these risks into account.

Meanwhile, the legal battle continues to escalate. In Wednesday’s ruling, the Dutch court ordered Wingtech and Nexperia China, backed by significant penalties, to refrain from interfering with Nexperia’s normal business and to withdraw claims in China that seek to undermine its previous rulings, according to Nexperia.

Wingtech must also refrain from enforcing injunctions issued by a Dongguan court on November 2.

The Dongguan Intermediate People’s Court had barred Nexperia’s Dutch entities and three executives from selling, transferring or pledging company shares, intellectual property or assets.

The South China Morning Post has reached out to Wingtech for comment.

Nexperia said its priorities were still to maintain stable operations, safeguard business continuity and serve its customers reliably.