Tumbling share price of Newport Wafer Fab’s Chinese owner is ‘adding more fuel to the fire’

The tumbling share price of Newport Wafer Fab’s Chinese owner is ‘adding more fuel to the fire’ as opposition mounts to its takeover, critics said.

Shanghai-listed Wingtech snapped up Newport Wafer Fab, Britain’s largest microchip maker, last year in a £63million deal.

But there has been fierce opposition from MPs, experts and industry figures, who want an official intervention.

Wingtech is part-owned by the Chinese communist party. The company is under even more scrutiny after its shares hit a two-and-a-half-year low yesterday, raising more questions about whether it is a suitable owner for Newport Wafer Fab.

Microchips are an essential part of all electronic devices and critics of the deal say the UK has lost a strategically important manufacturer. 

Bob Seely, Conservative MP and a member of Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, said: ‘The falling share price adds more to the fire here and raises more questions. But the fundamental issue hasn’t changed: we have to be more careful about selling strategic assets to authoritarian and one-party states.’

This week the committee said it did not believe the Prime Minister’s claims that Government national security adviser, Sir Stephen Lovegrove, had reviewed into the takeover. MPs have been perplexed that Lovegrove was asked to scrutinise the deal behind closed doors when most sensitive takeovers are investigated through an official Government intervention.

Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng is understood to be planning a probe – though this could still take weeks or even months. Defence analyst Howard Wheeldon said: ‘I’m not someone who doesn’t believe in foreign takeovers but software in any shape or form is a national interest – microchips are a national interest.’

Newport Wafer Fab does not make new or emerging products. It produces tech that has been around for years, and had more than 400 staff in 2020.