Taiwan Semiconductor Manufac-turing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world's biggest contract chipmaker, yesterday said it planned to sell up to US$2.58 billion in TSMC shares in the US on behalf of Royal Philips Electronics NV.
The latest share offering proposed by Philips would be the second leg of the Dutch company's long-term efforts to offload its total holdings in TSMC by 2010, which is in line with Philip's strategy of exiting the semiconductor industry.
The board of TSMC yesterday approved the plan to sell up to 240 million American Depository Receipts (ADRs), representing as many as 1.2 billion TSMC common shares, for Philips, the Hsinchu-based chipmaker said in a statement.
The 1.2 billion shares represent about 0.77 percent of the total 25.83 billion issued shares. The price of TSMC ADRs dropped 0.46 percent to US$10.75 last Friday. Each ADR represents five TSMC common shares.
Philips would not sell any more TSMC shares in the form of ADRs in the future, as it has agreed to only sell up to US$2.5 billion in TSMC ADRs on the New York Stock Exchange.
That is part of the agreement between Philips and TSMC announced on March 9 which announced the gradual sale of the US$8.5 billion TSMC shares owned by Philips during the next three years.
In mid March, Philips made the first step by selling 887 million TSMC shares for NT$65 (US$1.96) each to local long-term investors, reducing its holding to 12.8 percent from the original 16.2 percent.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the