■ New chairman for Taisugar
Kong Jaw-sheng (龔照勝), a board member of Taiwan Stock Exchange Corp (證交所), Tuesday took over the chairmanship of state-run Taiwan Sugar Corp (Taisugar, 台糖).
Kong replaces Wu Nai-jen (吳乃仁). Kong announced his resignation from the company earlier this month after he decided to join the Democratic Progressive Party's presidential campaign team.
Asked what he would do to continue Wu's plan for personnel downsizing -- a plan that involves reducing the company workforce by 45 percent, or 2,500 people, by January of next year -- Kong said that for now he will use a favorable pension system to encourage employees to retire.
"From a long-term perspective, I hope to use my skills in international banking and finance to help the company smoothly weather the transition," he said.
Taisugar reported a pretax loss of NT$960 million (US$28.2 million) for the first half of the year. Due to poor performance and labor disputes, the Ministry of Economic Affairs has not set a timetable for the privatization of Taisugar.
■ Winbond building wafer plant
Taiwanese memory-chip maker Winbond Electronics Corp (華邦電子) will finalize its plans to build a 12-inch wafer plant next month, one of the company's vice presidents said Tuesday.
Wilson Wen said Winbond has a list of potential partners for the NT$75 billion plant, but he declined to elaborate.
The company may use technology from Germany's Infineon Technologies AG or Japan's Sharp Corp to build the plant, which will have a monthly capacity of 40,000 pieces.
■ Ministry issues forgery warning
The Ministry of Finance yesterday cautioned credit card users to keep their eyes open when they use their credit cards to make purchases in public places like grocery stores.
"Hypermarkets, gas stations and department stores are places where most forged credit cards are duplicated," Huang Tien-mu (黃天牧), deputy director-general of the ministry's bureau of monetary affairs, said Tuesday.
Citing statistics from MasterCard International and Visa International, Huang hailed the government's successes in reducing credit card fraud.
Nationwide losses due to fake credit cards decreased from NT$1.59 billion in 2000 and NT$850 million in 2001 to NT$230 million in 2002 and NT$50 million this year.
To reduce credit cards fraud, the ministry has requested that all issuers upgrade their cards from magnetic cards to advanced integrated-circuit credit cards before 2006.
Huang said the government has also revised criminal laws to make them stricter. Laws now impose sentence of up to ten years for those convicted of credit card fraud.
■ Bike makers suffer shortage
Giant Manufacturing Co (巨大機械), Merida Industry Co (美利達工業) and other Taiwanese makers of bicycles face growing inventories of unfinished bikes because Shimano Inc cannot supply enough parts, a Chinese-language newspaper reported, citing company officials.
Taiwan's bicycle exports this year may fall short of estimates by about 20 percent, or 800,000 bikes, and inventories of unfinished bicycles are becoming a financial burden for the companies, the report said.
■ NT dollar higher
The New Taiwan dollar yesterday gained against its US counterpart, rising NT$0.028 to close at NT$34.033 on the Taipei foreign exchange market.
Turnover was US$426 million.";
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