I described Broadcom as “increasingly one of the most-feared technology companies in the world” in 2017. It was, at the time, basically a key supplier to Apple for WiFi and Bluetooth chips, as well as other chips and sensors used in iPhones, and had a market value of about US$110 billion. It was trying to gobble up rival chipmaker Qualcomm, which makes cellular baseband chips, through a hostile takeover.
In November 2017, I wrote a cover story for The Edge Singapore (Issue 806, Nov 20, 2017), which explained how Penang-born Tan Hock Eng was moving a second-tier semiconductor firm Broadcom’s domicile from Singapore to the US and mounting a US$105.3 billion takeover of rival chip firm Qualcomm to create a company that could dwarf then giant Intel. “Can he pull off the largest tech deal in history?” the story asked, and then he laid out how Tan’s acquisitive ways might change the global semiconductor industry.
The week I wrote the story, Tan was in the White House, praising President Donald Trump, who was only in his ninth month in office, for his sweeping tax cut proposals. At the time, few CEOs were audacious enough to be in the White House lauding the then embattled President. Tan teared up as he recounted his journey as a skinny teenager from Penang who had risen to head a successful global chip player. “My mother could never have imagined that one day her son would be in the Oval Office standing beside the president of the United States,” he said in a voice choked with emotions. “And my mother, too,” Trump said as he put an arm around Tan.
