TOKYO — The Tokyo District Court has picked Micron Technology Inc. as a buyer for Elpida Memory Inc. to revive the bankrupt Japanese chipmaker, dismissing an alternative plan put forward by bondholders.
The court said creditors must vote on a reorganization plan that includes the Micron offer by Feb. 26, Elpida said in a statement Wednesday. Boise-based Micron offered 200 billion yen ($2.5 billion) in July to take over Elpida. Bondholders challenged the deal, calling it “severely detrimental.”
“This is an important step forward in the reorganization process,” Micron Chief Executive Officer Mark Durcan said in a separate statement. The transaction, which remains subject to creditors’ approval as well as court and regulatory approvals in other countries, is expected to close in the first half of 2013, the company said.
Micron’s purchase of Tokyo-based Elpida may help the U.S. company vie with industry leader Samsung Electronics Co. while giving it greater control over supply gluts that have caused it to report losses amid falling prices. The deal doubles the U.S. company’s share of the global market for dynamic random-access memory, the most widely used memory chips in personal computers, to about 24 percent.
Elpida, Japan’s biggest maker of DRAM chips, filed for bankruptcy protection in February. Micron, the largest U.S. maker of computer memory chips, won approval from the Tokyo District Court in May to negotiate to buy Elpida’s entire business after the Japanese company held two bidding rounds.
Some of Elpida’s creditors had urged the Tokyo court to reject Micron’s takeover and presented an alternative plan in August.
