GlobalFoundries lost $1.3 billion in 1H 2016, Chinese fab deal falls through

While we don't really keep a close track of GlobalFoundries' financials, it seems the foundry is still doing extremely poorly as a report by DigiTimes suggests the Abu Dhabi government has considered a sale of part of all of the chip baker. In the first half of this year, GlobalFoundries booked a loss of around $1.3 billion.

The foundry is also having trouble with its joint-venture plan to upgrade a fab in China. Earlier this year, GlobalFoundries reached a memorandum of understanding with the Chongqing government to acquire a 51 percent stake in the fab. In exchange for the stake, GlobalFoundries would equip the 300mm fab with used equipment for the manufacturing of chips on 40nm and above process technologies.

The latest news is that the fab deal is falling through because the Chongqing government thinks it's not getting a fair deal. Nothing is official yet, but it doesn't look good:

The Chongqing government has now argued that Globalfoundries' total equipment expenditure for the fab is too cheap to obtain the 51% stake in the JV, the sources noted. It seems that no consensus has been reached yet, and the deal for the proposed JV is likely to fail, the sources said.

There has also been speculation that the Chongqing government is reviewing the direction of the proposed JV and is looking to find a better partner than Globalfoundries, according to the sources.