Nexperia’s Chinese owner pledges ‘all legal means’ fight for control of European chipmaker

Wingtech Technology, the Chinese owner of Dutch chipmaker Nexperia, said it will use all possible legal means to take back control of the company, putting pressure on the Dutch government to do more to restore the rights of the Chinese shareholder.\nIn a statement published a day after the Dutch government’s decision to suspend its intervention in Nexperia, Shanghai-listed Wingtech said the ruling made by the Dutch Enterprise Chamber on October 7, which deprived Wingtech of shareholder control and ousted former CEO Zhang Xuezheng, was still in effect.\n“The control of Nexperia has not yet returned to its legitimate owner,” Wingtech said in the Chinese-language statement. “The restrictions and infringements upon the lawful rights and interests of Chinese shareholders and personnel continue to persist.”\nWingtech said the Dutch government’s revocation of an executive order was only the first step towards a solution, and the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs had to do more to return the situation to the status before the Dutch authority took action.\nThe statement came as Nexperia’s Dutch headquarters in Nijmegen and its China operations have been in an open spat, threatening the stability of chip supplies to global carmakers.\nLawyers and legal experts said they expected a prolonged legal fight, as Wingtech was trying to challenge the decision made by the Dutch Enterprise Chamber, a court.\n\n\nZhang, who is also the founder of Wingtech, remained suspended and was not acting as the CEO, Nexperia’s headquarters said in its latest statement. Meanwhile, Wingtech’s voting rights in Nexperia were still under the control of an independent administrator appointed by the Dutch court.\nThe Chinese company said it was continuing to work with an international law firm to seek “legal remedies” and would “take all legal means” to safeguard its legitimate interests.\nTanguy Van Overstraeten, Olivier van der Waal and other lawyers at Van Bael & Bellis (VBB), a law firm based in Brussels and London that is not involved in the case, said Wingtech could “file a recourse to the Dutch Supreme Court” to undo the ruling of the business court. But it would be a review of legal procedure only, as it was not possible to re-examine the facts of the case, they said.\nAccording to Wingtech’s statement, the Dutch economic affairs ministry pushed the court to make the decision to seize control of Nexperia and kick Zhang off its board “without giving the Chinese owner a reasonable opportunity to present its case”.\nLu Tianyi, a counsel at TsingLaw and an expert in compliance in mergers and acquisition deals, said Wingtech could challenge the Dutch claims of mismanagement against Zhang. The accusations of incompetence, particularly about ignorance of US-side supply chain risks, had been weakened now that the US had decided to suspend a rule that extended trade blacklisting to subsidiaries more than 50 per cent owned by blacklisted entities, Lu said.\nThat rule partly precipitated the Nexperia saga, because Wingtech had been on the blacklist since December 2024, although the Dutch government denied that it acted under pressure from the US.\nThe whole legal process could take well more than two years, according to the VBB lawyers. This would include proceedings before the Dutch Supreme Court for around a year, another six to 12 months for the case to be sent back to an appellate court – assuming the Supreme Court annuled the Dutch Enterprise Chamber’s decision – and “several weeks or months” to restore governance rights if Wingtech wins, they said.\nTsinglaw’s Lu said a court challenge could be “a marathon”, taking three and a half years or even longer.\n