■ BANKING
Union votes to strike
Standard Chartered Bank Taiwan's labor union said it would strike soon if a new contract agreement is not reached. Union members met yesterday morning and passed the resolution after months of negotiations failed to address job security and other concerns. All but five of the 1,518 members at the meeting agreed to the strike. Union spokesman Wu Wen-hsiung (吳文雄) told the Central News Agency the union had to take action because no agreement had been reached in 11 rounds of talks held since Standard Chartered announced last year that it would take over the Hsinchu International Bank (新竹國際商銀). The union said it would notify the management of the decision tomorrow. It has not set a strike deadline.
■ STOCKS
HSBC eyes sales in China
HSBC Holdings PLC, Europe's biggest bank by value, is talking with Chinese regulators about selling shares in the country. "There have been discussions held with the relevant authorities on the potential listing on the Shanghai Stock Exchange," Vincent Cheng (鄭海泉), HSBC's Asia-Pacific chairman, told reporters in Hong Kong yesterday. "There isn't a timetable" for a stock sale, he said. Beijing said on Thursday that it would let foreign companies sell stock and bonds domestically for the first time, responding to US calls to open its markets and acting to increase supply in an equity market that's more than doubled this year.
■ ENTERTAINMENT
PS3 sales to hit target: Sony
Worldwide sales of Sony Corp's PlayStation 3 (PS3) are expected to reach 11 million by the end of this fiscal year, a top executive said in an interview published in the Yomiuri Shimbun yesterday. Kazuo Hirai, chief executive officer of Sony Computer Entertainment, told the newspaper he was confident of fulfilling that goal despite competition from Nintendo's Wii and Microsoft's XBoX 360. Sony cut the price of the PS3 by 10 percent in Japan to ¥39,980 (US$356) and launched a new slimmed-down version, ratcheting up the competition with its rivals ahead of the crucial year-end sales period. A recent report said the PS3 video games console had outsold Wii in Japan last month.
■ ENERGY
Solar battery plant planned
Sharp Corp, Japan's biggest maker of solar batteries, will spend about ¥100 billion (US$883 million) to build a solar battery plant in Osaka Prefecture, the Nikkei Shimbun reported, citing Sharp chairman Katsuhiko Machida. Sharp will construct the factory for thin-film solar cells in Sakai, next to a liquid-crystal display plant under construction, Nikkei said. It will likely become the world's largest solar-cell plant, capable of producing 1,000 megawatts of capacity yearly, the report said. Sharp expects the factory to be operating by March 2010.
■ AUTOMOBILES
Ford expects Jaguar deal
Ford Motor Co expects to complete the sale of its Jaguar and Land Rover nameplates by early next year at the latest, company executives say. Ford spokesman Mark Truby said on Friday that Ford could not rule out the possibility of a deal for a buyer for the brands before the end of the year. However, Mark Fields, Ford's president of the Americas, said it was possible the firm might not be ready to announce a deal until the early part of next year. The guessing in Detroit is that Tata Motors and Chase & Company's One Equity Partners are the leading contenders for Jaguar and Land Rover.
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
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
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has appointed Rose Castanares, executive vice president of TSMC Arizona, as president of the subsidiary, which is responsible for carrying out massive investments by the Taiwanese tech giant in the US state, the company said in a statement yesterday. Castanares will succeed Brian Harrison as president of the Arizona subsidiary on Oct. 1 after the incumbent president steps down from the position with a transfer to the Arizona CEO office to serve as an advisor to TSMC Arizona’s chairman, the statement said. According to TSMC, Harrison is scheduled to retire on Dec. 31. Castanares joined TSMC in
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