Stefan Mileschin

Japan's ailing chipmaker Renesas is going cap in hand to its major shareholders, like the company which sounds like a sneeze, Hitachi.

The loss making chipmaker needs to find $1.3 billion to pay for restructuring costs and having looked down the back of the sofa has decided to try and score a bob or two from its mates.

According to the Nikkei, Renesas, which makes microcontroller chips for cars, has posted cumulative net losses of nearly $6 billion over the past seven years.

It is having a devil of a job keeping up with Samsung Electronics who are all locked in an expensive race to build ever smaller and faster chips.

Under the restructuring plan, to be submitted to shareholders Hitachi, Mitsubishi and NEC Corp, Renesas has promised to slash 14,000 jobs and sell its Tsuruoka system-chip factory.

The Yomiuri newspaper claims that Hitachi, Mitsubishi Electric and NEC would hold board meetings on Thursday to think about it.

The Tsuruoka system chip factory and the Renesas Mobile unit, which makes chips for mobile phones, would remove another 3,100 workers from its payroll while the rest of the job losses will come from natural attrition, earthquakes and plague.

http://news.techeye.net/chips/renesa...o-shareholders