The buyer for the French semiconductor company Altis is a Russian state owned arms dealer.

The deal at between 300 million euro and 500 million euro was revealed by IBM and Infineon Technologies but at the time they said that the purchaser was AES.

However according to the Kommersant newspaper AES is owned by a Russian holding company called Global Information Services, with offices in Moscow and Miami.

This appears to be owned by Rosoboronexport State Corp. The website for the company is www.rusarm.ru

Rosoboronexport sells tanks, MIG fighter aircraft, surface warships and submarines, long-range air defense missile systems, radar and electronic warfare and electronic countermeasures systems.

Altis made logic chips at 250-nm and 130-nm and R&Ded magnetic RAM and conductive-bridging RAM. It is possible that Rosoboronexport could use Altis to contribute to the development of electronics systems in VAZ automobiles.

More 2000 people work at Altis Semiconductor's 55-hectare wafer fab site at Corbeil-Essonnes south of Paris.

More here.