“GT Advanced Technologies has signed a pact with Apple Inc. for an ‘amicable parting of the ways,’ Luc Despins, attorney for the bankrupt supplier to the technology giant, said Tuesday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New Hampshire,” Peg Brickley reports for The Wall Street Journal.
“Mr. Despins said GT Advanced and Apple have agreed to file a revised explanation for GT Advanced’s surprise bankruptcy filing as part of the pact, and ultimately erase from the public record the court papers that set out what went wrong in the relationship between the two companies,” Brickley reports. “The lack of information about GT Advanced’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy has caused a stir among creditors and shareholders shocked by what Senior Assistant New Hampshire Attorney General Peter Roth called GT Advanced’s ‘catastrophic’ collapse.”
“Mr. Despins said the proposed settlement allows GT Advanced to try to sell the furnaces at the Mesa, Ariz. sapphire-manufacturing facility, and give the money to Apple, which financed the equipment. GT Advanced would surrender its claims against Apple, under the deal, and agree not to disparage the technology giant, Mr. Despins said,” Brickley reports. “Judge Henry Boroff, at the start of the case, huddled privately with attorneys for Apple and GT Advanced, with an officer of the Justice Department present, and ordered sealed the declaration that explains the reasons for the company’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Tuesday, he said the papers will remain sealed while GT Advanced and Apple pursue their settlement.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Cinderous Uncoupling.
So what happens to the current manufacturing of sapphire glass for touch ID and Watch?
Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of ‘The Sapphire Turns’.
I think Apple was getting the lens covers and Touch ID buttons from additional sources. GTAT was supposed to produce iPhone screens and Apple Watch screens in an exclusive deal.
So back to Gorilla Glass we go. I like Corning, but I don’t like the way they struck a deal with Samsung.
I was hoping the GTAT deal would be an awesome stick it to them message from Apple. Instead it collapsed quite spectacularly.
What deal with Samsung?
Samsung made $2 billion+ deal with Corning in 2013 that made them the largest shareholder in the company (7.4%)
That’s one main reason I suspect Samsung were somehow involved in this mess, they saw Apple trying to move to a material they don’t control and leaving them with largely useless investment.
Come on. What was wrong with Sammy making a deal with Corning.. They did so based on what Apple was doing with GT and Sapphire.. They had every right. It’s just turning up to now be a problem for Apple. They were NOT perfect otherwise there wouldn’t be secrets..
If the US can warm up to Iran, why can’t Apple to Samsung?
/s
I think you mean slightly less frozen there will be little warming with Iran in the short term. Probably longer for Apple and Samsung mind.
Unfortunately, the workers who moved to Arizona are all out of a job. New neighborhoods which were being developed nearby are now suddenly hurting.
Arizona which spent millions of dollars in infrastructure improvements is now out in the cold.
Nice deal! Not!!!
Smells like Enron to me.
Enron was blatantly crooked. I think these guys were just incompetent. They cashed out their shares and are leaving everyone else holding the bag.
Please don’t link to a paywall.
I was hoping Apple was going to buy the furnaces outright and get it done anyway. They could have kept the employees and spun off a company from it.
Could Apple buy the furnaces through a third party, and then get back the money from ate sale (their own money?). 🙂
I had thought of that too. However it’s possible that is somehow illegal, don’t know the law. If it’s legal, I hope they do it. It would be nice for Apple to have something exclusive and unique like this.
Supply chain genius????
LOL, how is Apple (or anybody else) supposed to keep jobs in America when they have companies like this? Push them a little to produce quality products and they just quit and declare bankruptcy… We seldom hear their overseas partners complaining. Did anybody force these guys to enter into this deal with Apple???
GTAT was the biggest disappointment in a long while. Really, Really sucks for the optimistic shareholder investors who thought this was a great deal. The GTAT MANAGEMENT is as bad as it gets. They should be ashamed of themselves
We only see what the media reports, but I’ve seen enough to know that the CEO and other officials are corrupt.
These crooks should end up in jail. The way I see it, they entered into this deal to buy the time to boost their shares to bail themselves out, maybe their families and friends too. The 21st century American dream, I’ll call it.
You willingly enter into a contract, knowing your partner is known to demand quality stuff, then buy a whole bunch of stuff with the money you receive, sell off all your shares for a handsome profit, then threat to file bankruptcy, threaten to sue because the partner’s standards are too tough? And your partner’s forced the settle with you? I tell you, this country has one f’ed up legal system…
Can’t blindly ask our companies to stay local. fix the gotdang system, make it a bit less easy for these crooks to abuse it at least!
Wonder how much this is going to end up costing…
I think I saw the furnaces being loaded onto a boat headed for South Korea.
Also a big folder labelled “Apple trade secrets”
Gather around me children, on my merry-go-round.
As we travel round its circumference, events abound.
Some new, some old, some lost and some found.
Flotations afloat, flotations aground.
Amazing success, losses profound.
Yet the best we can do, is stay on the merry-go-round.
For when we come off it, we could find ourselves outward bound.
Flung at speed to land painfully on the ground.
Yelling aloud,
That was not meant to happen not on a fairground!.
“I have paid in advance, How can you be aground?”
“It is the demands you made on the claims I made that I found,
Scupperd my boat the one on thats run aground”.
For in my claims I did not realize my business you would impound.
So bankruptcy is the mound.
I stand on to confound.
Both you and the shareholders bloodhounds.
To conceal the unsound.
Manner in which I have spent your investment on things unrenowned.
And so to court I go, my last stand, a battleground.
Please feel free to applaud all at once! I can take it!! 🙂
I consider your effort to be laudable, Crabby.
KingMel, you are swell!!! 🙂
Lets talk about what Apple is hiding. Obviously they were not perfect and this is not just a GT issue. I’m pro Apple but this proves my point which that Apple is not perfect same as any other company. Let’s not put them on a pedestal any longer, they make mistakes too.
Dear rob, dead people are perfect,
that is why our eulogies put them on a pedestal,
after all, they can no longer make mistakes!
Unlike we the living, every step is a negotiation between what is right or wrong, invariably, we come across more wrongs than right just as we come across more rights than wrong.
Some people rights highlight our wrongs, whilst some peoples wrongs highlight our rights.
Those who stand upon a soapbox to point a finger at others wrongs are bound to slip off the box in an embarrassing fall caused by the tears of their victims causing the soap to sud. Point not a finger at others as you simultaneously point four more at yourself.
Idiotic. Oh, let’s clarify dead people were once alive so, they are not perfect dead. They are dead imperfect people.