Christopher Leong (梁家鏘), president of Singapore's Transpac Capital (匯亞基金), yesterday took over Gray Wang's (王令麟) chairmanship at the Eastern Multimedia Co (EMC, 東森媒體科技), with the aim of helping the company enter international stock markets, an official of the local cable-TV operator said yesterday.
"Leong's financial expertise and experience with venture-capital businesses will help EMC's development," said Chen Cheng-yi (
Under Leong's leadership, the company hopes to become a listed company in international markets, Chen said, without elaborating on the time frame for this plan.
Before the shareholders' meeting yesterday, Chinese-language media speculated that the company's foreign investors joined forces to squeeze Wang out of the management board, referring to the company's financial loss of around NT$2.7 billion last year.
Chen dismissed that speculation, saying that Wang had long proposed relinquishing his chairman's seat at the cable company, which also owns the Eastern TV (
Wang, who owns 18 percent in the company's shares, on Friday voluntarily offered to step down in order to focus on the media group's global expansion strategies, Chen said.
At that time, Wang announced that he had recommended three suitable candidates to replace him, including Leong, Daniel Tsai (
Leong yesterday secured a majority of votes to be elected as the company's new chairman. Wu remains the company's CEO and president. Transpac Capital owns a 12.5-percent stake in Eastern Multimedia.
Leong, a physicist, followed in his father's footsteps by beginning his own career in the food industry. He later entered the venture-capital business in the 1980s before heading Transpac Capital of Singapore -- one of Asia's largest and oldest private equity fund managers.
Leong told reporters yesterday after the shareholders' meeting that he believed the company's vast re-investments were to blame for its losses. He said he would make improving the company's financial transparency a top priority, before pursuing ways to expand its global presence.
Sweeping policy changes under US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr are having a chilling effect on vaccine makers as anti-vaccine rhetoric has turned into concrete changes in inoculation schedules and recommendations, investors and executives said. The administration of US President Donald Trump has in the past year upended vaccine recommendations, with the country last month ending its longstanding guidance that all children receive inoculations against flu, hepatitis A and other diseases. The unprecedented changes have led to diminished vaccine usage, hurt the investment case for some biotechs, and created a drag that would likely dent revenues and
Global semiconductor stocks advanced yesterday, as comments by Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) at Davos, Switzerland, helped reinforce investor enthusiasm for artificial intelligence (AI). Samsung Electronics Co gained as much as 5 percent to an all-time high, helping drive South Korea’s benchmark KOSPI above 5,000 for the first time. That came after the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose more than 3 percent to a fresh record on Wednesday, with a boost from Nvidia. The gains came amid broad risk-on trade after US President Donald Trump withdrew his threat of tariffs on some European nations over backing for Greenland. Huang further
Macronix International Co (旺宏), the world’s biggest NOR flash memory supplier, yesterday said it would spend NT$22 billion (US$699.1 million) on capacity expansion this year to increase its production of mid-to-low-density memory chips as the world’s major memorychip suppliers are phasing out the market. The company said its planned capital expenditures are about 11 times higher than the NT$1.8 billion it spent on new facilities and equipment last year. A majority of this year’s outlay would be allocated to step up capacity of multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash memory chips, which are used in embedded multimedia cards (eMMC), a managed
CULPRITS: Factors that affected the slip included falling global crude oil prices, wait-and-see consumer attitudes due to US tariffs and a different Lunar New Year holiday schedule Taiwan’s retail sales ended a nine-year growth streak last year, slipping 0.2 percent from a year earlier as uncertainty over US tariff policies affected demand for durable goods, data released on Friday by the Ministry of Economic Affairs showed. Last year’s retail sales totaled NT$4.84 trillion (US$153.27 billion), down about NT$9.5 billion, or 0.2 percent, from 2024. Despite the decline, the figure was still the second-highest annual sales total on record. Ministry statistics department deputy head Chen Yu-fang (陳玉芳) said sales of cars, motorcycles and related products, which accounted for 17.4 percent of total retail rales last year, fell NT$68.1 billion, or
RSS