<story><title>France&apos;s largest semiconductor company got nationalized in plain sight (2022)</title><url>https://www.fabricatedknowledge.com/p/how-frances-largest-semiconductor</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Lazare</author><text>On the one hand, what&amp;#x27;s being alleged doesn&amp;#x27;t actually sound...particularly bad? I don&amp;#x27;t see any obvious ethical concerns, and if it&amp;#x27;s against French law then that should be litigated in court, not on a blog post.&lt;p&gt;But on the other hand, the evidence presented to support these allegations seems awfully weak. For example, to make the claims work the author flags a list of people as being on &amp;quot;Team France&amp;quot; merely because they are French nationals, or in one case, merely because they happen to be on another board &lt;i&gt;with&lt;/i&gt; someone who is a French national?&lt;p&gt;Weird, messy fights for control of public companies happens all the time; this doesn&amp;#x27;t even sound particularly interesting, even if the wildest claims being made are true.&lt;p&gt;Not sure if the author is just &lt;i&gt;extremely&lt;/i&gt; naive, know there&amp;#x27;s nothing going on here but is trying to manufacture a controvery, or is just bad at writing and left out some key information. Whatever the case, I&amp;#x27;m just left confused why I&amp;#x27;m meant to care.&lt;p&gt;(Also, I&amp;#x27;m more familiar with US finance. Maybe this really &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; unusual in France? Because poison pill provisions and standstill agreements and such are routine in the US. As are boards with power over things like, eg, issuing more shares.)</text></comment>
<story><title>France&apos;s largest semiconductor company got nationalized in plain sight (2022)</title><url>https://www.fabricatedknowledge.com/p/how-frances-largest-semiconductor</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>pr337h4m</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s no real evidence of the French state nationalizing Soitec.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;Last is Team France. With the exception of Francoise Chombar, they are all French Nationals. I put Francoise Chombar on Team France because she shares a board with Eric Meurice at Umicore, so I assume she’s on his team.&lt;p&gt;How exactly are these directors &amp;quot;Team France?&amp;quot; There&amp;#x27;s no reason to believe that they are agents of the French government just because they&amp;#x27;re French nationals.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;All of the board actions in conjunction means that this was likely premeditated by the controlling shareholders - the state of France - to further control Soitec.&lt;p&gt;Bpifrance and CEA are state-owned, but the free float is 61%, not to mention BlackRock&amp;#x27;s 8% stake. There doesn&amp;#x27;t seem to be anything stopping the shareholders who make up the free float from voting out the board or accepting a tender offer.</text></comment>