Dialog Semiconductor in £4.3m takeover by  Japan’s Renesas Electronics

Reading-based Dialog Semiconductor has agreed to sell itself for £4.3bn to Japan’s Renesas Electronics

A chip maker that counts Apple among its customers has become the latest British firm to be targeted by a foreign suitor.

Reading-based Dialog Semiconductor has agreed to sell itself for £4.3billion to Japan’s Renesas Electronics. The deal is likely to add to fears that British firms whose share prices have been laid low by the pandemic are proving cheap targets for rivals abroad.

From the start of 2020 to mid-March, Frankfurt-listed Dialog’s shares plunged by more than 50 per cent as the Covid-19 crisis sent stock markets into a tailspin.

By last month the shares had recovered their losses, and they had increased 25 per cent so far this year, off the back of strong sales of Apple’s new iPhone, before the Renesas Electronics’s offer.

The deal is likely to prove controversial after the saga of British chip group Arm, first taken over by Japan’s Softbank, and now being bought by US rival Nvidia.

That takeover is being scrutinised by the Competition and Markets Authority amid fears it could result in less competition and higher prices in the global chip market.