Isn't This a First ????

On a sunny day (Thu, 23 Oct 2014 09:34:10 -0700 (PDT)) it happened snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote in :

IBM partnering with Apple to make business apps for the iphone. And THAT should bring in billions?

Business without a keyboard? Its a silly joke.

Wafer fabs often have very expensive leased equipment. You buy the fab, you get stuck with the leases. Hence you might be given money to take the fab off of some company's balance sheet. The seller can remove the liability of the leases.

I never leased a car, but I believe there are situations where the seller might pay you some money to take over the lease.

It's semiconductor. It's rife with crazy.

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also firing people cost money, they may have commitments to build certain ICs for a period, maybe even ICs IBM (now Lenovo) use

-Lasse

I doubt that there will be many firings. They have fabs to run and people who know how to do it. IBM still makes hardware. They didn't sell everything to Lenovo. Yes, there are such contracts in place (IBM will continue to have access to and use those fabs, exclusively, AFAIK) but that doesn't require up-front payments. It won't be free.

The other weasel in the bag is the environmental concerns at the Essex fab. The ground water is severely contaminated with Perc (has been for forty years) and constant attention has to be paid to it. There is a network of wells around the property that constantly pull water from the aquifer, scrub, and replace it. That will have to go on forever. GF signed up to take on that responsibility, too. AIUI, GF wanted $2B and the deal almost fell through. They settled on $1.5B in arbitration.