The dispute at Nexperia escalated on September 30 when the Dutch government seized control of the company, citing fears it was transferring operations and intellectual property to China. The government later revoked the move to defuse a standoff with Beijing. Nexperia makes silicon wafers, discs containing multiple chips, in Europe, which are then sent to its plant in China where they are cut and packaged. On October 7, the Amsterdam Enterprise Court ordered the suspension of Wingtech founder Zhang Xuezheng as Nexperia’s Chief Executive Officer and stripped Wingtech of control over Nexperia’s shares citing “well-founded reasons to doubt” the company was being managed correctly.
At Wednesday’s hearing, the first in public, judges will hear arguments on whether they should now order a full investigation into allegations of mismanagement made by senior European executives at Nexperia, or whether the earlier moves should be reversed. A decision will follow at a date to be set later. In siding with Nexperia’s European executives previously, judges said that Zhang might have had a conflict of interest due to his ownership of a factory in Shanghai that sold wafers to Nexperia, and that he and Wingtech had not made governance changes needed to prevent Nexperia from being placed on United States blacklist.
–SABC–
