On February 13, 2019, the State Administration for Market Regulation issued an announcement on its website, conditionally approving KLA-Tencor Corporation’s Acquisition of Sole Control of Orbotech Ltd.

KLA-Tencor is a world-leading semiconductor process control equipment supplier located in Silicon Valley, California, the U.S., and its products are widely used in the semiconductor manufacture and packaging process.

KLA-Tencor has engaged T&D Associates for the anti-monopoly filing in China, and the team, led by Dr. John Ren, has provided the legal service in the whole process. During the review process, T&D, representing the company, submitted multiple rounds of supplemental materials to the enforcement authority in a timely and effective manner; had several negotiations regarding how to reduce the negative impact on the relevant markets arisen out of the transaction; and finally, helped finalize a remedy proposal both acceptable to the enforcement authority and to the company, and successfully obtained the approval from the enforcement authority.

It is worthy noting that the anti-monopoly review period of this transaction in China lasted for less than 300 days, which is the shortest one compared to other conditionally approved cases after the integration of China’s three anti-monopoly enforcement authorities, enabling the transaction to be closed before the expected closing date; the semiconductor products involved in this case are very technical and the industry is complex, T&D, together with senior executives from the company, actively cooperated with the enforcement authority to help them have a deeper understanding of the industry, by means of organizing a number of meetings with the enforcement authority, etc. Also, during the final negotiations of the remedy proposal, while trying its best to address the industry concerns to the largest extent, T&D also has spared no efforts to safeguard the legitimate interests of the company.

KLA-Tencor has highly appraised the work of Dr. John Ren and the team for obtaining the anti-monopoly review approval in China and thanked T&D’s fantastic work many times both in person and by email.