Operator

Our next question is from the line of Craig Berger with FBR Capital Markets.

Pick Hover - FBR Capital Markets

Okay, [Pick Hover] in for Craig, thanks for taking my question. First, just in terms of the announcement, if that does close, will that eliminate the pension liabilities in France?

Steve Laub

Again, I am not going to presuppose what a transaction would look like. I understand your questions and I completely appreciate the questions and in no way am I attempting not to answer them, but I could only tell you what I am allowed to discuss at this point and so I don't want to even begin to say what it would look like, because right now we are still in process. We are proposing different alternatives; we are working with our partners and the authorities in France to make sure that we do this in an appropriate fashion.

Pick Hover - FBR Capital Markets

Okay.

Steve Laub

We will however share with you, answers to all these questions as soon as we are allowed to do so.

Pick Hover - FBR Capital Markets

Understood, and just for my follow-up, can you talk about fab utilization in the December quarter and where you expect it to trend in the March quarter, thank you?

Steve Laub

Yeah, our overall blended fab utilizations were in the 80% area. And we benefited, as you remember, from a North Tyneside side closures. So, we may be able to put a lot of demand into the remaining fabs within Rousset and Colorado. So, that certainly helps us out when the overall demand levels have been shrinking. And going forward we do expect that to, with a low demand outlook, we do expect that to step down a little bit further into Q1.

Pick Hover - FBR Capital Markets

Thank you.

Stephen Cumming

Just a clarification, I think the level was actually close to 85% in Q4 for the fab utilization. And as Steve mentioned, the closing of the North Tyneside fab really put us in a very good position relative to capacity and capacity utilization. I think we are probably in better shape than most other companies frankly in our industry. We are in a position where we expected that we are doing that very aggressively under the normal environment to be bringing our foundry capacity, in fact we were actually quite worried. We would not be able to satisfy all of our requirements if business had kept up the way it was moving. So, in some respects as I said, we are in good position, surely less than a position than Atmel historically has been, in respect to that.

Pick Hover - FBR Capital Markets

Thank you.

Operator

(Operator Instructions).

Our next question is from the line of Doug Freedman with BPSG.

Doug Freedman - BPSG

Can we dig into some of the numbers that you reported in December? If I look at the SG&A line looks like almost a 21% increase on a like-for-like September to December? Can you help me to understand what's going on there?

Stephen Cumming

Yes, Doug. Within the SG&A line, with some one time items, as I mentioned earlier on in the script, we had a one time bad debt provision of $11.7 million and also some legal settlement expenses of $3.3 million. There were the main items. We did have charges associated with unsolicited M&A expenses as well, which increased our overall SG&A in Q4.

Steve Laub

Doug, just to give you a perspective on the distributor issue that we faced. What happened was that the US government; one of our distributors, a very limited distributor of ours at that time on discounted parts lists; which basically says you cannot shift to that distributor. So effectively, in a constructive way, almost terminated from doing business, so that they shouldn't be able to do business with us. So we obviously replaced the distributors, but it obviously impacted it adversely, impacted their motivation, and their ability, frankly, to be able to pay the money that they ordered. It's an unusual situation that is, frankly, the exception.

Doug Freedman - BPSG

Do you have any insurance recourse there? Is that something that we could see back in future quarters?

Steve Laub

No. We don't have an insurance recourse for that. It's something that, to the extent that, clearly when that happens, these distributors work for the government and try to get released from that list. If that was to happen, we'll be, optimistically, able to recapture that money. But for time being, we think, we're being prudent and taken the action that we did.

Doug Freedman - BPSG

Okay. And if we go back and hopefully I'll ask you a question that you can answer in regard to the ASIC business. The revenue that you've recorded year-to-date or for the full year 455 I believe it is you're selling off business at 416. Can you help us understand the $40 million or so there that you're keeping?

Steve Laub

Yeah. There was another business that we include within the business segment. It's an Advanced Products Group, it's staying with company. It's actually based here in the state. And so that business is staying as part of the Atmel. But the business segment or the business unit as defined as the three different products here as I descried earlier are the ones that make up the 416.

Doug Freedman - BPSG

Okay. Is that -- would that otherwise be non-offset I think you prefer to it in the past as your security is that the security stuff?

Steve Laub

Well it is some security stuff and for example Crypto. So our Crypto products are in there, for example yes. There is also security obviously smart cards are security cards in the ASIC's Group. It's one of the reasons we've all together, frankly, because there is some relationship there. But the customer base and the actual solution itself are different. They share some technology, but they are different. And so it was something that we felt we were going to retain as part of Atmel.

Doug Freedman - BPSG

All right. And then operationally moving on, if I was to look at sort of your inventory clearly a big jump, hard to keep it from not going up, given what we've seen in the demand picture. Can you give us some idea when you think it will come back to what would consider normal? And how quickly do you think you can get it back to that target level?

Steve Laub

Well normal is probably close to the days of inventory that we had prior to the jump. Well, Steven what was that number?

Steve Cumming

119 days.

Steve Laub