The troubled German computer chip maker Infineon said it would make a major capital increase with the backing of the US investment fund Apollo.

Infineon said it would issue new shares worth a total 725 million euros (one billion dollars), and that current shareholders would be given a place at the head of the line to buy them.

The plan calls for the issuance of 337 million new shares at 2.15 euros per share, a statement said.

Apollo has pledged to buy shares not taken by the current shareholders up to a total of 326 million, which would represent a stake of 30 percent minus one share in the German company.

The move confirmed a press report earlier on Friday in the Financial Times Deutschland (FTD).

The operation would be one of the biggest in a German company in several months, the newspaper said, and represents a change for Apollo, which normally acts like a hedge fund that buys an ailing company to either restructure it, sell off valuable parts, or merge it with another firm at a profit.

Infineon has suffered from a collapse of the automobile electronics component sector and is already in the process of restructuring its activities.

In the first half of its 2008/2009 fiscal year, it posted a net loss of 662 million euros on sales of 1.6 billion, the FTD said.