Qualcomm is still fighting hard against semi-conductor company Broadcom Limited’s hostile take-over attempt.
Today the chipset manufacturer, which powers the majority of popular Android handsets on the market, rejected the board of director nominees assembled by Broadcom and private equity firm Silver Lake Partners.
It was a unanimous board decision, with Qualcomm stating: “These nominees are inherently conflicted and would not bring incremental skills or expertise to the Qualcomm Board.”
Qualcomm has previously asserted the nominees were conflicted given Broadcom’s “desire to acquire Qualcomm in a manner that dramatically undervalues Qualcomm to Broadcom’s benefit.”
Instead, the San Diego-based chipset manufacturer nominated its current 11 directors for re-election at its 2018 annual meeting of stockholders on March 6th, 2018.
Broadcom’s list of proposed directors included a former president of the mobile networks business group of Nokia, and the former director and chairman of the board of Dialog Semiconductor.
Formerly Avago Technologies, the company now known as Broadcom Limited acquired fabless semi-conductor manufacturer Broadcom Corporation in 2016, taking part of its name. In recent years, the 56-year-old company has been buying and selling various companies in the semiconductor industry at a rapid rate.
In November, Broadcom proposed to purchase Qualcomm with a $103 billion cash-and-stock bid. Qualcomm refused, stating that was of a dramatic undervaluation of the company.
While Qualcomm has rejected Broadcom’s proposal outright, it still potentially paves the way for a proxy fight, in which some shareholders intrigued by Broadcom’s proposal might try persuading other shareholders to let them use their proxy votes to make changes to the company’s board members.
