2 Minute Read by Reuters Staff (Reuters) – SHANGHAI, July 9 – Tsinghua Unigroup, a Chinese chip conglomerate, announced on Friday that it had received notice from a Beijing court that its creditors had demanded that the indebted semiconductor conglomerate be restructured. The development at Tsinghua Unigroup, which is 51 percent owned by China’s Tsinghua University and run by former real estate billionaire Zhao Weiguo, comes after the company’s debts grew as a result of a string of acquisitions that failed to produce meaningful profit. Tsinghua Unigroup claimed in a post on its social media account that its creditors told the court that it couldn’t pay its debts and that its current assets weren’t worth enough to compensate for the value lost. It stated that it “would completely comply with the court in conducting a judicial review in line with the law, aggressively promote debt risk mitigation, and support the court in defending creditors’ lawful rights and interests.” Tsinghua Unigroup positioned itself as a prominent participant in China’s chip sector, even attempting to buy US memory chip producer Micron Technology at one point. It reported having $31 billion in debt and only $8 billion in cash and cash equivalents as of June 2020. By the end of 2020, the company had defaulted or crossed-defaulted on $3.6 billion in onshore and offshore bonds. (Josh Horwitz contributed reporting, and Alexander Smith edited the piece.)/n
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