■ Officials make appeal
Over 100 Taiwanese lawmakers on Friday appealed to the Grand Justices to overrule a government decision to dispose of the state-run Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) shares through an American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) issue. "More than 100 legislators ... support the action, among them five are from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party," said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Tsai Chin-lung (蔡錦隆). They requested the Grand Justices to issue an emergency ruling to halt the Chunghwa Telecom shares disposal plan before a final constitutional decision is made, he said. The Financial Supervisory Commission approved last month a proposal for Chunghwa Telecom to offer up to 1.64 billion existing shares through ADRs. Chunghwa Telecom Workers' Union has fiercely opposed privatizing of the company, which began in 2002, saying it jeopardized employee benefits.
■ Temasek eyes Chang Hwa
Temasek Holdings, Singapore's state-owned investment company, is eyeing a stake in Taiwan's Chang Hwa Commercial Bank (彰化銀行), Dow Jones Newswires reported Friday, citing a source familiar with the situation. Chang Hwa, the nation's sixth largest lender by assets, is offering 1.4 billion new shares, equivalent to a 22 percent stake, worth at least NT$25.17 billion based on the bank's lowest offering price of NT$17.98 a share. Chang Hwa has said it expects to close the deal by next Friday.
■ Tech recruitment planned
Representatives of more than 40 domestic high-tech companies will take part in an annual Cabinet-organized overseas talent search tour set for Sept. 21-Oct. 3 to the US, Canada and Japan, officials said yesterday. The representatives are expected to meet some 1,500 overseas high-tech professionals in San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver and Tokyo. According to a survey released late last year by the Cabinet's Science and Technology Advisory Group, the talent shortage in Taiwan's semiconductor, image display, communications, digital content, bio-technology and IT service industries is estimated at 25,505 people between this year and 2007. The Cabinet organized similar tours in 2003 and last year, which successfully recruited 1,155 people.
■ BenQ tinkers with Siemens
BenQ Corp (明基), the nation's biggest handset maker, may undertake a reorganization of the mobile-phone unit it bought from Siemens AG, Financial Times Deutschland said, citing an internal letter to employees. BenQ may continue to keep the development, purchases and logistic units as separate departments, though two new divisions, one responsible for Asia and the other for Western markets, may be created, the newspaper said. The regional focus should help to adjust costs, quality and product selection according to the individual markets, the newspaper said. BenQ may combine the mobile-phone unit's marketing operations while it is still undecided about the future of the production division, the newspaper reported.
■ Uni-President wants milk firm
Uni-President Group (統ㄧ集團) plans to pay 300 million yuan (US$36 million) for a 15 percent stake in China's second-largest powdered milk producer, the company said in a statement on Thursday. Uni-President will will buy 76.4 million shares in Wondersun Dairy Co (完達山乳業) in Heilongjiang Province through its subsidiaries in China at 3.9243 yuan each, Uni-President said.
ASML Holding NV’s new advanced chip machines have a daunting price tag, said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), one of the Dutch company’s biggest clients. “The cost is very high,” TSMC senior vice president Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, referring to ASML’s latest system known as high-NA extreme ultraviolet (EUV). “I like the high-NA EUV’s capability, but I don’t like the sticker price,” Zhang said. ASML’s new chip machine can imprint semiconductors with lines that are just 8 nanometers thick — 1.7 times smaller than the previous generation. The machines cost 350 million euros (US$378 million)
Apple Inc has closed in on an agreement with OpenAI to use the start-up’s technology on the iPhone, part of a broader push to bring artificial intelligence (AI) features to its devices, people familiar with the matter said. The two sides have been finalizing terms for a pact to use ChatGPT features in Apple’s iOS 18, the next iPhone operating system, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the situation is private. Apple also has held talks with Alphabet Inc’s Google about licensing its Gemini chatbot. Those discussions have not led to an agreement, but are ongoing. An OpenAI
INSATIABLE: Almost all AI innovators are working with the chipmaker to address the rapidly growing AI-related demand for energy-efficient computing power, the CEO said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported about 60 percent annual growth in revenue for last month, benefiting from rapidly growing demand for artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing applications. Revenue last month expanded to NT$236.02 billion (US$7.28 billion), compared with NT$147.9 billion in April last year, the second-highest level in company history, TSMC said in a statement. On a monthly basis, revenue surged 20.9 percent, from NT$195.21 billion in March. As AI-related applications continue to show strong growth, TSMC expects revenue to expand about 27.6 percent year-on-year during the current quarter to between US$19.6 billion and US$20.4 billion. That would
‘FULL SUPPORT’: Kumamoto Governor Takashi Kimura said he hopes more companies would settle in the prefecture to create an area similar to Taiwan’s Hsinchu Science Park The newly elected governor of Japan’s Kumamoto Prefecture said he is ready to ensure wide-ranging support to woo Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to build its third Japanese chip factory there. Concerns of groundwater shortages when TSMC’s two plants begin operations in the prefecture’s Kikuyo have spurred discussions about the possibility of tapping unused dam water, Kumamoto Governor Takashi Kimura said in an interview on Saturday. While Kimura said talks about a third plant have yet to occur, Bloomberg had reported TSMC is already considering its third Japanese fab — also in Kumamoto — which would make more advanced chips. “We are