Lee & Ko successfully represented worldwide competitors and customers in their respective third party complaints filed with the KFTC, opposing the proposed Applied Materials Inc. (“AMAT”) and Tokyo Electron Ltd. (“TEL”) merger.
As two of the largest semiconductor manufacturing equipment companies in the world, the proposed AMAT-TEL merger would have detrimentally impacted competition within the semiconductor fabrication equipment and downstream industries. Not only did Lee & Ko actively cooperate with the KFTC during the merger review process, to aid its understanding of the industry and the substantial impact that the merger would have had on competition and innovation, we also worked closely with a U.S. law firm in submitting the clients’ opinions to the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”). As a result, both the KFTC and the DOJ rejected AMAT-TEL’s remedy proposal, and AMAT and TEL abandoned their merger plans on April 27, 2015.