Aug. 29--TOKYO -- Shareholders of Elpida Memory Inc., a struggling major Japanese chipmaker, approved a private share flotation to receive a de facto public fund injection at their extraordinary assembly held Saturday, the Tokyo-based company said.

Elpida, the world's third-largest and Japan's sole maker of dynamic random access memory chips, will issue 30 billion yen worth of preferred shares, a type of share that carries no voting rights, to be subscribed by the Development Bank of Japan.

The state-owned bank is scheduled to make the payment on Monday, Elpida said. Eighty percent of the funds for the payment are guaranteed by the government.

In June, the government picked Elpida as the first recipient of public funds under its emergency financial aid program introduced to help non-financial companies hard hit by the global economic downturn.

Elpida Memory told the assembly that the money will be spent on technology development and investments in equipment, sources familiar with the meeting said. The assembly drew 225 shareholders and lasted only 27 minutes, according to Elpida.

Elpida is expected to introduce the latest equipment for producing DRAM chips for cell phones and digital TV sets at its Hiroshima factory.

The company incurred a group net loss of 44.45 billion yen in the April-June quarter amid the economic downturn and is also seeking aid from its Taiwanese technology partner, Taiwan Memory Co., a memory chip company set up by the Taiwanese government.

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