Local entrepreneur Lawrence Ting (
Ting, 65, jumped from a 15th-floor window shortly after a meeting with his lawyers in an office building on Jenai Road in Taipei.
He was the chairman of both Central Trading and Development Corp (中央貿易開發) and speaker manufacturer CX Technology Corp (錩新科技).
His death came as investigators probed claims of possible insider trading of CX Technology shares as well as the alleged misappropriation of around NT$7 billion from Central Trading and Development.
CX Technology shares plunged to a record low of NT$12.95 yesterday on the Taiwan Stock Exchange owing to fears of possible financial problems.
Ting's wife, Fei Tsung-ching (費宗清), told reporters late Thursday night that her husband committed suicide to prove his innocence.
Central Trading and Development spokesman Sung Yun-chien (
A fight for dominance within the company might have had more to do with it, Sung said.
Chen Ching-chih (陳清志), who owns a one-third stake in Central Trading and Development, has been vying for control of the company over the past six months, according to Sung.
In May, Chen filed an embezzlement suit with the Taipei Prosecutor's Office against Ting after a row about the distribution of a cash dividend to shareholders, Sung said.
Ting had been dubbed the "King of Vietnam" after pioneering investment in an industrial park and power plants in Vietnam in the early 1990s via Central Trading and Development.
The corporation still has several investments in Vietnam, including a power generation company and a property development venture.
The property development venture, Phu My Hung Corp, is 70-percent owned by Central Trading and Development. Tan Thuan Industrial Promotion Co, a state enterprise based in Ho Chi Minh City, owns the remaining 30 percent.
Phu My Hung is known for the new Saigon South development tract, which boasts upmarket villas, condominiums and office buildings. The company last month filed a lawsuit against Vietnam's Ministry of Planning and Investment over a preferential tax rate dispute. In addition to the Saigon South development, the venture has also built the adjacent Tan Thuan industrial park.
Ting was given an award by Vietnamese Prime Minister Phan Van Khai in 1997 for his contributions to the country's economic development.
Ting was also known for his ties with the sporting community and was a former deputy chairman of the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee. He led the Taiwanese delegation to the 1976 Olympic games in Montreal, Canada.
GROWING OWINGS: While Luxembourg and China swapped the top three spots, the US continued to be the largest exposure for Taiwan for the 41st consecutive quarter The US remained the largest debtor nation to Taiwan’s banking sector for the 41st consecutive quarter at the end of September, after local banks’ exposure to the US market rose more than 2 percent from three months earlier, the central bank said. Exposure to the US increased to US$198.896 billion, up US$4.026 billion, or 2.07 percent, from US$194.87 billion in the previous quarter, data released by the central bank showed on Friday. Of the increase, about US$1.4 billion came from banks’ investments in securitized products and interbank loans in the US, while another US$2.6 billion stemmed from trust assets, including mutual funds,
Micron Memory Taiwan Co (台灣美光), a subsidiary of US memorychip maker Micron Technology Inc, has been granted a NT$4.7 billion (US$149.5 million) subsidy under the Ministry of Economic Affairs A+ Corporate Innovation and R&D Enhancement program, the ministry said yesterday. The US memorychip maker’s program aims to back the development of high-performance and high-bandwidth memory chips with a total budget of NT$11.75 billion, the ministry said. Aside from the government funding, Micron is to inject the remaining investment of NT$7.06 billion as the company applied to participate the government’s Global Innovation Partnership Program to deepen technology cooperation, a ministry official told the
AI TALENT: No financial details were released about the deal, in which top Groq executives, including its CEO, would join Nvidia to help advance the technology Nvidia Corp has agreed to a licensing deal with artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Groq, furthering its investments in companies connected to the AI boom and gaining the right to add a new type of technology to its products. The world’s largest publicly traded company has paid for the right to use Groq’s technology and is to integrate its chip design into future products. Some of the start-up’s executives are leaving to join Nvidia to help with that effort, the companies said. Groq would continue as an independent company with a new chief executive, it said on Wednesday in a post on its Web
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s leading advanced chipmaker, officially began volume production of its 2-nanometer chips in the fourth quarter of this year, according to a recent update on the company’s Web site. The low-key announcement confirms that TSMC, the go-to chipmaker for artificial intelligence (AI) hardware providers Nvidia Corp and iPhone maker Apple Inc, met its original roadmap for the next-generation technology. Production is currently centered at Fab 22 in Kaohsiung, utilizing the company’s first-generation nanosheet transistor technology. The new architecture achieves “full-node strides in performance and power consumption,” TSMC said. The company described the 2nm process as
RSS