Formosa denies consolidation
Taiwan's petrochemical giant Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團) is planning to set up a holding company to control five of its major subsidiaries, a Chinese-language newspaper said yesterday.
The group will integrate operations of units Formosa Plastics Corp (台塑), Nan Ya Plastics Corp (南亞塑膠), Formosa Chemical and Fiber Corp (台塑化纖), Formosa Taffeta Corp (福懋興業) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) under the root of the new holding company, the paper cited group vice chairman Wang Yung-tsai (王永在) as saying.
But a company official yesterday denied the report. "There's no such thing," said Jerry Lin, an acting spokesman for the company.
The planned holding company would have an initial capitalization of more than NT$210 billion, making it the largest listed company in Taiwan, overtaking Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co's (台積電) NT$199.2 billion, it said.
LNG shows interest
Australia LNG Pty, the company that markets liquefied natural gas from the North West Shelf project, said it may bid for a contract to supply 42 million tonnes of the fuel to Taiwan.
Royal Dutch/Shell Group, the world's third-largest publicly traded oil company, said last week it will bid for the contract with Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電). The state-run power company wants to use the gas at its proposed 4,000-megawatt Tatan (大潭) thermal power plant in northern Taiwan.
The tender requires the successful bidder to build a terminal and plant in Taiwan, and Shell said it will build the terminal.
The tender, which is the third attempted natural gas tender by Taipower, closes on Mar. 24 next year and involves 1.7 million tonnes a year. The date for delivery of first gas under the tender has been put back in the latest tender to the start of 2008, compared with 2005 in the earlier two.
Asia Optical base approved
The Industrial Development Bureau under the Ministry of Economic Affairs has approved an application from the Asia Optical group to set up an operational headquarters in Taiwan.
The approval means that Asia Optical will benefit from tax incentives set by the government and it is estimated that the group will be exempt from up to NT$140 million (US$4 million) in business income tax as of the third quarter of this year.
The revenue of Asia Optical exceeded NT$10.8 billion in the first 10 months of this year, setting a historic high.
TSMC chairman optimistic
Morris Chang (張忠謀), chairman of Taiwan Semiconductor Manu-facturing Co (台積電), said over the weekend that he believes sales during the fourth quarter will come in slightly better than expected.
Chang emphasized that he is sticking with his original forecast of an industry lull lasting until the second quarter of next year.
The company had said that sales in the fourth quarter would drop as slowing demand cut its utilization rate to around 50 percent from 85 percent in the second quarter.
Chang also told staff the entry of new competitors in the made-to-order chip industry, meant TSMC had to continue to improve itself in order to stay ahead.
NT dollar falls
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday fell against its US counterpart on the back of weaker Japanese yen, down NT$0.047 to close at NT$34.757 on the Taipei foreign exchange market.
The turnover was US$257 million, compared with last Friday's US$444 million.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts