| Fine won’t slow Infineon expansion in Richmond
Virginia Business
November 2004
Infineon
Technologies says its legal woes won’t affect
the pace of the $1 billion expansion under way at its
Henrico County factory.
In September, the German chip manufacturer agreed to
plead guilty to a charge that it had conspired with
other chip companies to fix prices for some computer
memory chips. As punishment, the company will pay the
third largest antitrust fine in U.S. history —
$160 million — and Infineon executives who refused
to cooperate will likely face criminal prosecution,
according to U.S. Department of Justice officials.
In
November, company lawyers will be in a Richmond federal
courtroom to answer allegations that Infineon infringed
on patents held by Rambus Inc., a semiconductor design
company based in Los Altos, Calif.
Still, Infineon spokesman Christophe Liedtke says, “we
are committed to the investment we have made in Richmond
as well as to the people that we need to run the facility.
Everything is proceeding according to plan.”
That plan, announced in April, will initially allow
the Richmond plant — Infineon’s only U.S.
factory — to double its current production of
dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips and quickly
ramp up additional capacity if necessary. The expansion
will require the plant to add 800 employees to its current
work force of 1,755. The hiring process is under way,
Liedtke says, and will be completed by September 2005.
“The conditions for Richmond haven’t changed,”
he says, noting that, even with its recent legal troubles,
Infineon expects a strong financial showing this year.
The Richmond facility “still has an excellent
infrastructure, it still has state-of-the-art manufacturing
expertise and it has been one of our best performers
in terms of productivity.”
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