■ Banking
Workers strive for board seat
Workers at Chang Hwa Commercial Bank (彰化銀行) are trying to win a seat on the bank's board by gathering proxy voting rights in the company, a Chinese-language newspaper reported, citing a statement from the workers' union. The union is planning to use the seat to ensure workers' rights, the report said. The bank plans to elect board members on Nov. 25, the report said. Chang Hwa Commercial's workers union is also calling for workers to take Nov. 25 off to slow the bank's operation, the report said. More than 1,600 of the lenders' 5,000 workers have expressed willingness to follow the union's request, it said. Taishin Financial Holding Co (台新金控) on July 22 agreed to pay NT$36.6 billion (US$1.09 billion) for management control of Chang Hwa, creating the second-largest banking group in Taiwan in terms of assets.
■ Investment
Shin Kong consolidates
Shin Kong Financial Holding Co (新光金控), the owner of Taiwan's second-largest life insurer, said it will buy Shinkong Investment Trust Co (新光投信) for about NT$1.7 billion (US$52 million) as it adds asset management to its business. Shin Kong Financial will pay NT$40 a share for Shinkong Investment's 43.5 million outstanding shares, the holding company said in a statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange on Friday. The takeover will "allow the financial holding company to consolidate and share resources to boost market shares and create new products," Shin Kong Financial's statement said.
■ Labor
Workers allegedly beaten
The president of an Italian sofa factory in southern China apologized to workers who said they were beaten amid a pay dispute, saying in a letter on Friday that he would investigate the incident personally. Luca Ricci, president and chief executive officer of DeCoro Ltd, denied that workers' wages have been slashed at his factory in the city of Shenzhen. "Upon my return to China, I will launch an investigation into the real reason behind this incident," Ricci said in a faxed letter. He said any Italian managers who acted improperly would be disciplined. Ten workers who confronted managers over their smaller-than-expected paychecks were dismissed, and when they tried to re-enter the factory last Monday they were surrounded by four or five foreign supervisors and beaten, according to reports in newspapers including Hong Kong's South China Morning Post and the mainland's Southern Metropolitan Daily. Staff contacted by phone said almost 3,000 employees stayed away from work the next day in protest. Workers who took to the streets were dispersed by riot police.
■ Automakers
Ford touts ethanol stations
Ford Motor Co said on Friday it is teaming up with an energy company to increase the number of ethanol fuel stations in the US next year. Ford said it will work with Brookings, South Dakota-based VeraSun Energy Corp to convert existing fuel pumps to E85, an alternative fuel made from a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. Ford spokeswoman Chris Morrisroe said that Ford would announce the number of stations and their location at a later date. Morrisroe said Ford plans to add less than 100 fuel stations in the Midwest, where ethanol is readily available because it's distilled from corn and grain. Only about 500 of the 180,000 fuel stations in the US currently offer E85, Ford said.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to