The tech world was buzzing during last October when IBM agreed to pay GlobalFoundries $1.5 billion to take over their semiconductor manufacturing facilities in East Fishkill and Vermont. The deal is now expected to close as of July 1st.
The closing of the deal will put to end months and months of regulatory approvals. It will also move thousands of employees from the IBM payroll over to the GlobalFoundries payroll. The plants will have new employees in East Fishkill, Dutchess County, and Essex Junction, new Burlington Vermont. This comes to many in the tech world as no surprise as GlobalFondries announced last year that they were looking to invest $10 billion over the next year in their facilitates, primarily in the facilitates in New York. The chip plant in Malta Saratoga County has a total of 3,000 employees another 3,000 construction workers. They plan on adding 600 staff employees to this plant by years end.
There’s been no immediate comment from IBM or GlobalFoundaries themselves about the closing, but the sources close to both companies are saying that the deal is definitely going to close. Both companies did admit in the past to the deal closing sometime at the end of 2015.
Local and state leaders along with the companies are saying that they feel the sale is a great way to preserve jobs and expand the company in the New York area. The deal interestingly comes at the same time as IBM being rumored to make yet another round of job cuts across the country. IBM has so far preserves most of their jobs in New York because of the contractual obligations between the state and the company. Other plants, have not been so lucky. In January, GlobalFoundries confirmed that they have offered jobs to all of the IBM workers that are part of the final sales but we don’t know how many offers have been given out so far.
