NEC Electronics and Renesas are preparing a survival-driven merger that could create Japan’s biggest chipmaker.

The proposed deal, which is likely to be completed in just under a year, will form a group capable of eclipsing Toshiba, the country’s largest player in semiconductors, and occupying a 30 per cent share of the global market for car-based microcontrollers.

Assuming that Toshiba does not, as some analysts expect, attempt a semiconductor merger of its own with Fujitsu, the merged group of NEC and Renesas would become the third-largest chipmaker in the world. It would be less than half the size of Intel but on reasonably strong competitive terms with Samsung Electronics, the world No 2.

Brokers in Tokyo were quick to speculate that the merger could prompt some of Japan’s other chipmakers to contemplate their own defensive mergers as most of the eight big players cope with huge financial losses amassed during 2008.

Elsewhere in the crisis-hit sector, companies are seeking new arrangements. Elpida Memory is being pushed by the Japanese Government to forge ties with rivals in Taiwan.

Talks between NEC Electronics and Renesas come as other parts of corporate Japan are coming round to the idea – terrifying though it is for many boardrooms – that their future depends on ceding independence and merging to survive. The ferocity of the economic storm, one senior official at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry told The Times, has effectively forced Japanese companies to consider their options.

The deepening global recession caused the Japanese Government to predict that the current fiscal year would be Japan’s worst since the Second World War and forecast a GDP contraction of 3.3 per cent. With the pace of export decline stabilising but still dreadful, and with the financial system heading for a string of gigantic losses, investors increasingly are eyeing Japan as a potential hotbed of defensive mergers and acquisitions – deals that historically have been impeded by a combination of corporate pride and inertia.

Aozora Bank and Shinsei, both resurrected from the financial destruction of Japan’s “lost decade”, are understood to be in merger talks. Many car analysts believe that defensive mergers may be in the offing between some smaller manufacturers.

However, such predictions have been made before, without the expected wave of consolidation crashing on to the market. Many of Japan’s industries remain highly fragmented while their counterparts around the world have swollen into more dominant forces. Renesas is the product of a merger between the semiconductor units of Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electric, but it did not provoke others into similar transactions.

Analysts at Goldman Sachs warned in a report yesterday that a shake-out of the semiconductor industry was likely to be painful, particularly because the sector is in so much financial agony. Plants capacity and headcount would need to be cut back fiercely before any mergers could go ahead, Ikuo Matsuhashi wrote. “We believe Toshiba and Renesas are unlikely to be able to restructure unless they raise more capital, so public share offerings from Toshiba and Hitachi look a possibility,” he said.

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