Two creditor banks yesterday applied to the Taoyuan District Court for a restructuring of debt-ridden Allied Material Technology Corp (展茂光電), formerly the nation's second-biggest maker of color filters for flat panels.
Allied Material shut down its production without warning last month and has failed to repay a total of NT$1.46 billion (US$44 million) of loans to Ta Chong Bank (大眾銀行) and Far Eastern International Bank (遠東國際商銀), according to filings to the GRETAI Securities Market.
"The company has no cash on hand right now," Ta Chong's spokesman James Chiou (
"Our move is designed to prevent the company from manipulating its assets and safeguarding our rights" in the wake of rising doubts about the company's fundraising plan and new management team, Chiou said.
Allied Material owe Ta Chong about NT$900 million.
The two banks also applied for a provisional lien on the company's fifth-generation color filter plant in Taoyuan, which was pledged as collateral for loans.
The lenders said the value of the advanced fabrication plant can fully compensate for the defaulted loan, considering the rising demand for color filters driven by the expected recovery in the flat panel sector.
Color filters, one of major components in making thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal-display panels, account for approximately 20 percent of the total cost of a 17-inch computer panel.
Allied Material spokesman Kuo Fang-chi (
The banks' filing yesterday was the latest episode in the controversy surrounding the troubled company.
Allied Material was suspended from trading on the over-the-counter market on April 9.
Established in 2000, the company fell into financial difficulty when the color-filter industry was hit by overcapacity, which led to a management shakeup in January.
However, conflict between the new management and previous executives has cast a cloud over the company's plan to resume production and raise NT$3 billion through a private placement.
Allied Material's board of directors approved on Tuesday a resolution to jack up its capitalization to as much as NT$280 billion -- a leap from the current NT$11.5 billion -- by selling its stock for as low as NT$0.129 per share.
The decision surprised the market as that would make the company — assuming it succeeds — even bigger than Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), the world's largest made-to-order chipmaker, in capitalization.
WASHINGTON’S INCENTIVES: The CHIPS Act set aside US$39 billion in direct grants to persuade the world’s top semiconductor companies to make chips on US soil The US plans to award more than US$6 billion to Samsung Electronics Co, helping the chipmaker expand beyond a project in Texas it has already announced, people familiar with the matter said. The money from the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act would be one of several major awards that the US Department of Commerce is expected to announce in the coming weeks, including a grant of more than US$5 billion to Samsung’s rival, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), people familiar with the plans said. The people spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the official announcements. The federal funding for
HIGH DEMAND: The firm has strong capabilities of providing key components including liquid cooling technology needed for AI servers, chairman Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday revised its revenue outlook for this year to “significant” growth from a “neutral” view forecast five months ago, due to strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers from cloud service providers. Hon Hai, a major assembler of iPhones that is also known as Foxconn, expects AI server revenues to soar more than 40 percent annually this year, chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) told investors. The robust growth would uplift revenue contribution from AI servers to 40 percent of the company’s overall server revenue this year, from 30 percent last year, Liu said. In the three-year period
LONG HAUL: Largan Energy Materials’ TNO-based lithium-ion batteries are expected to charge in five minutes and last about 20 years, far surpassing conventional technology Largan Precision Co (大立光) has formed a joint venture with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) to produce fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, mobile electronics and electric storage units, the camera lens supplier for Apple Inc’s iPhones said yesterday. Largan Energy Materials Co (萬溢能源材料), established in January, is developing high-energy, fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries using titanium niobium oxide (TNO) anodes, it said. TNO-based batteries can be fully charged in five minutes and have a lifespan of 20 years, a major advantage over the two to four hours of charging time needed for conventional graphite-anode-based batteries, Largan said in a
Taiwan is one of the first countries to benefit from the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, but because that is largely down to a single company it also represents a risk, former Google Taiwan managing director Chien Lee-feng (簡立峰) said at an AI forum in Taipei yesterday. Speaking at the forum on how generative AI can generate possibilities for all walks of life, Chien said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) — currently among the world’s 10 most-valuable companies due to continued optimism about AI — ensures Taiwan is one of the economies to benefit most from AI. “This is because AI is