■ Executives indicted
Shinkong Financial Holding Co (新光金控) chairman Eugene Wu (吳東進) and his finacial adviser Wu Tung-hsiung (吳統雄) were indicted yesterday by the Taipei District Prosecutors' Office on suspicion of insider trading, after the collapsed merger between Shinkong Financial and Taishin Financial Holdings Co (台新金控) in 2002. The two companies announced on June 25, 2002, that they would merge in a share swap deal. But to facilitate the deal, Taishin had asked Shinkong to set aside an additional NT$19.6 billion to cover potential losses stemming from higher insurance policy claims. Because of the additional provision, Shinkong later decided to report an after-tax loss of NT$8.82 billion instead of an earlier forecast of NT$3.96 billion profit that year, which angering Taishin, which called off the merger on July 3 the same year. Prosecutors accused Eugene Wu and Wu Tung-hsiung of insider trading of stocks, as they allegedly sold the Shinkong shares they owned two weeks before the announcement of revised financial forecast. Taishin chairman Thomas Wu (吳東亮) is the younger brother of Eugene Wu.
■ CAL, Delta share codes
Taiwan's leading carrier China Airlines (CAL, 華航) said yesterday it will expand code-sharing services with US-based Delta Air Lines starting Monday. CAL will add three additional code-sharing destinations on Delta flights from Los Angeles to Orlando, Fort Lauderdale and Tampa while Delta will place its codes on CAL flights from Taipei to Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur, it said. The new services will allow passengers to fly to Atlanta, Cincinnati, Salt Lake City, Orlando, Fort Lauderdale and Tampa via Los Angeles, or from San Francisco to Atlanta, or from Honolulu to Los Angeles and San Francisco. CAL will operate 13 destinations in the US after the expanded code-sharing. Meanwhile, Delta will place its codes on CAL flights from Honolulu, Los Angeles, New York (JFK), San Francisco and Seattle to Taipei, and onward to Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur.
■ E-mail filter launched
New e-mail filtering software developed by two domestic universities was launched yesterday, with its creators claiming it can filter some 97 percent of junk mails, the National Chung Cheng University (NCCU) announced. According to Kuo Yao-huang (郭耀煌), the software, dubbed "Nopam, " was jointly developed by NCCU and National Tsinghua University, and can handle more than 1 million e-mails in Intel Pentium 4 computers per day, with the error margin of less than 0.01 percent. This software will be offered to various schools or academic sectors of the country for free, Kuo said, adding that he is proud of the achievement. NCCU Professor Lee Hsing-lin (李新林) noted that the research and development of computer software is quite difficult in Taiwan, as few entrepreneurs are willing to dedicate themselves to this area, and therefore it needs long-term efforts. Wu Sheng (吳昇), director of NCCU's Internet center, said some junk mails are disguised in different versions to elude e-mail filtering software, but Nopam can compare the sources, contents, titles, the similarity, or whether they are sent in quantities to find these junk mails.
■ NT dollar gains
The New Taiwan dollar continued gaining ground against its US counterpart, rising NT$0.013 to close at NT$31.892 on the Taipei foreign exchange market. Turnover was US$597 million, down from US$753 million the previous day.
RUN IT BACK: A succesful first project working with hyperscalers to design chips encouraged MediaTek to start a second project, aiming to hit stride in 2028 MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip supplier, yesterday said it is engaging a second hyperscaler to help design artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators used in data centers following a similar project expected to generate revenue streams soon. The first AI accelerator project is to bring in US$1 billion revenue next year and several billion US dollars more in 2027, MediaTek chief executive officer Rick Tsai (蔡力行) told a virtual investor conference yesterday. The second AI accelerator project is expected to contribute to revenue beginning in 2028, Tsai said. MediaTek yesterday raised its revenue forecast for the global AI accelerator used
TEMPORARY TRUCE: China has made concessions to ease rare earth trade controls, among others, while Washington holds fire on a 100% tariff on all Chinese goods China is effectively suspending implementation of additional export controls on rare earth metals and terminating investigations targeting US companies in the semiconductor supply chain, the White House announced. The White House on Saturday issued a fact sheet outlining some details of the trade pact agreed to earlier in the week by US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) that aimed to ease tensions between the world’s two largest economies. Under the deal, China is to issue general licenses valid for exports of rare earths, gallium, germanium, antimony and graphite “for the benefit of US end users and their suppliers
Dutch chipmaker Nexperia BV’s China unit yesterday said that it had established sufficient inventories of finished goods and works-in-progress, and that its supply chain remained secure and stable after its parent halted wafer supplies. The Dutch company suspended supplies of wafers to its Chinese assembly plant a week ago, calling it “a direct consequence of the local management’s recent failure to comply with the agreed contractual payment terms,” Reuters reported on Friday last week. Its China unit called Nexperia’s suspension “unilateral” and “extremely irresponsible,” adding that the Dutch parent’s claim about contractual payment was “misleading and highly deceptive,” according to a statement
Artificial intelligence (AI) giant Nvidia Corp’s most advanced chips would be reserved for US companies and kept out of China and other countries, US President Donald Trump said. During an interview that aired on Sunday on CBS’ 60 Minutes program and in comments to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said only US customers should have access to the top-end Blackwell chips offered by Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company by market capitalization. “The most advanced, we will not let anybody have them other than the United States,” he told CBS, echoing remarks made earlier to reporters as he returned to Washington
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