American Qualcomm buys Dutch NXP in €43 billion deal

United States company Qualcomm acquired Dutch chipmaker NXP in a deal that involves about 43 billion euros, NOS reports. According to the broadcaster, this is one of the largest acquisitions of a Dutch company in history.

Qualcomm's main business is making chips for mobile phones and tablets. The company designes the chips, but they are produced by other companies. Bloomberg previously reported that Qualcomm wants to reduce its dependence on the smartphone market, which is slowing down.

NXP supplies chips for the automotive industry, among other things. Last year the Dutch company, formerly a division of Philips, had a turnover of 6.1 billion dollars, about 5.5 billion euros.

Both companies agreed to the deal, according to NOS. They expect that the merger will only be fully complete late in 2017. Shareholders and supervisors both still have to approve the deal.

NXP employes about 45 thousand people worldwide, 2,400 people in the Netherlands. The employees were briefed on the deal on Thursday afternoon.