Renesas says to tie up with TSMC in microchip business

TOKYO May 24 (Reuters) - Japanese chipmaker Renesas Electronics Corp said on Thursday that it plans to tie up with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co in the microchip business.

The confirmation came after a Yomiuri Shimbun report that the chipmaker would likely outsource some microchip production to TSMC, the world's biggest contract chip maker, under a tie-up.

Renesas is scheduled to hold a news conference on Monday to talk about a tie-up with TSMC.

"It (outsourcing some microchip production) could be possible, but we cannot give more details now," a spokeswoman said. "The head of the microchip business will be speaking at the news conference, but it won't be about a factory closure or anything like that."

The paper reported on Tuesday that Renesas plans to cut about 15 percent of its workforce and raise 50 billion yen ($630 million) in new capital as it struggles to get back on its feet.

The spokeswoman said Monday's announcement would not be about an equity tie-up with TSMC.

"If it were a capital tie-up, our president would be attending the news conference, but he is not," she said.

Renesas - a product of successive mergers of the chip units of Mitsubishi Electric, Hitachi Ltd and NEC Corp - is the world's biggest supplier of microcontroller chips used in automobiles. ($1 = 79.2300 Japanese yen) (Reporting by Ayai Tomisawa; Editing by Edmund Klamann)