Rohm Restructuring After Denso Withdrawal

Semiconductor analyst Satoshi Ohyama assesses the realistic outlook and challenges facing the three-company alliance after Denso dropped its acquisition bid for Rohm.

• Denso never intended a hostile takeover of Rohm; withdrawal was inevitable once Rohm resisted
• Rohm is moving to concretize and accelerate the business integration with Toshiba Device announced in March 2024, ahead of the June shareholder meeting
• Some within Toshiba Device oppose the Rohm merger, but Ohyama expects the deal to proceed now that Rohm has stated it publicly
• Mitsubishi Electric’s IGBTs and Toshiba’s silicon MOSFETs share roughly 70% of front-end processes, so a combined operation would yield meaningful scale benefits
• Rohm’s SiC and Mitsubishi’s IGBTs use different materials and processes but serve adjacent application areas — a pairing that could offer customers Infineon-style breadth of choice
• Mitsubishi Electric does not treat power devices as a core business and has historically avoided consolidation; Ohyama expects it to stay out this time as well
• Around 80% of SiC demand is EV-driven and has felt the market slowdown, but expansion into industrial and energy applications offers mid-to-long-term upside
• The real competition Japan must focus on is Infineon (Germany) and rising Chinese players — not internal turf battles

2026-04-27 · Watch on YouTube

Japanese page: デンソー撤回後、ローム再編の行方