The world's second largest pharmaceutical company, Glaxo-SmithKline (GSK), is planning to set up a vaccine research and development center in Taiwan, sources from the Executive Yuan said yesterday.
Russell Greig, president of GSK Pharmaceuticals International, paid a courtesy visit to Premier Yu Shyi-kun Tuesday for talks on the company's plans to establish a vaccine R&D center in Taiwan, which would be the company's first in Asia, as well as a vaccine mass production center, Executive Yuan officials said.
GSK is a world-leading research-based pharmaceutical company headquartered in the UK, with operations based in the US.
Its management signed a cooperation memorandum with Health Minister Chen Chien-jen (
Huge market
According to Greig, GSK is eyeing Asia's potentially huge market for vaccines against communicable diseases, with China as the prime target.
If the GSK vaccine R&D center is established in Taiwan, it will serve as the company's vaccine supply hub in Asia, fully dealing with demand in the region, Greig said during his meeting with Premier Yu.
Greig is expected to exchange views with Taiwan officials on two major issues: namely whether the company's branch office can establish a GSK research and development center in Taiwan, and how GSK products will be exported to China from Taiwan, according to Executive Yuan officials.
According to the nation's law, a branch office of a foreign company cannot invest in Taiwan to set up a research and development center like the one that GSK envisages establishing.
However, the GSK can easily do so if it first establishes a new company in Taiwan, the officials said
WTO solution
As to the issue of how GSK products will be exported to China from Taiwan, the officials said that as both Taiwan and China are WTO members, this will not be a problem.
In response, the government will facilitate the GSK investment plan by offering tax breaks and assistance in land acquisition, as well as by rewording relevant medical regulations and removing other investment barriers.
GSK has about a 7-percent share of the world's pharmaceutical market. It also has leadership in four major therapeutic areas -- namely anti-infective, central nervous system, respiratory, and gastro-intestinal/metabolic drugs.
GSK had sales of US$31.8 billion and before-tax profits of US$9.7 billion for last year. Pharmaceutical sales amounted to US$27 billion for last year, with new products representing 27 percent of total sales.
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
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
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],”
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