Before a chip goes into a phone or a network switch, someone has to test it and seal it in a package. In 2000, much of that work for Texas Instruments and Nortel happened in Singapore, at ST Assembly Test Services. STATS ran 165 testers and 364 wire bonders there. Singapore Technologies, the state-linked group, owned 90.6 percent of it. In January 2000 STATS went public in both New York and Singapore.

Mixed-Signal Specialists

ST Assembly Test Services was incorporated in Singapore on October 31, 1994. It did the back-end work of chipmaking: testing finished chips and assembling them into packages. It built particular skill in testing mixed-signal chips, which handle analog and digital signals together. Communications chips made up 62.1 percent of its revenue in the first nine months of 1999. Its sister company, Chartered Semiconductor, was an important customer from the start.

Two Listings, One Merger

STATS sold 153 million shares at S$3.554 each, or US$21 per American depositary share, in January 2000. The ADSs traded on Nasdaq as STTS, and the shares listed on the Singapore Exchange. In 2004 it merged with U.S. rival ChipPAC to form STATS ChipPAC. A Temasek unit raised its stake through a tender offer in 2007, and the Nasdaq listing ended that year. China's JCET acquired the company in 2015.

Cover: Lion Column, Venice, Donald Shaw MacLaughlan. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a lion on a column (Singapore, the Lion City).