A Taiwanese construction design company is threatening to sue the Ukrainian government for not honoring a tender to renovate a Kiev stadium that will be used in the Euro 2012 soccer championship.
Taipei-based Archasia Design Group Ltd (瀚亞聯合建築師事務所), which won a tender on April 16 to renovate the 84,000-seat stadium, accused the Ukrainian government on Friday of acting “illegally” and “unreasonably” in asking the firm to provide documents by a deadline it contends was impossible to meet or forfeit its rights to the project.
Days after the company failed to comply, Ukrainian Deputy Sports Minister Rostyslav Karandeyev said on Tuesday that negotiations on the stadium deal had ended because of problems with the firm’s legal status in Ukraine, with which Taiwan does not have diplomatic relations.
The company, however, dismissed reports that Ukraine had stopped the negotiations and was looking for a replacement contractor.
Perhaps to avoid diplomatic complications, the company said in a statement on Friday that it was also trying to solve the stadium dispute by having its Shanghai affiliate sign the contract for the stadium renovation with the Ukraine government.
The controversy has been magnified by growing impatience from UEFA with Ukraine’s lackluster preparations for the competition and mounting fears that further delay of the stadium project might cost Ukraine its right to host the event.
UEFA is European soccer’s governing body.
In its statement on Friday, the company said it had faced repeated obstacles in the process of finalizing the contract with Ukrainian authorities, including Kiev’s refusal to provide requested information on the stadium.
The dispute came to a head, the company said, when Ukrainian officials demanded that the company provide documents not related to the contract in a bid to block the signing of the contract.
The officials demanded on June 19 that the documents be authenticated by governments of both countries by June 20, or it would otherwise cancel the contract negotiations, the statement said.
However, because of the absence of diplomatic ties between Taiwan and Ukraine, the authentication process would take weeks because the documents needed to go through Taiwan’s and Ukraine’s overseas offices in Japan to be translated and authenticated, the statement said, calling the action “illegal” and “unreasonable.”
The stadium is scheduled to hold five matches, including the final, in the Euro 2012, which Ukraine will co-host with Poland.
The renovation was expected to cost around US$300 million.
DAMAGE REPORT: Global central banks are assessing war-driven inflation risks as the law of unintended consequences careens around the world, spiking oil prices Central banks from Washington to London and from Jakarta to Taipei are about to make their first assessments of economic damage after more than two weeks of conflict between the US and Iran. Decisions this week encompassing every member of the G7 and eight of the world’s 10 most-traded currency jurisdictions are likely to confirm to investors that the specter of a new inflation shock is already worrying enough to prompt heightened caution. The US Federal Reserve is widely expected to do exactly what everyone anticipated weeks ahead of its March 17-18 policy gathering: hold rates steady. The narrative surrounding that
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) share of the global foundry market rose to almost 70 percent last year amid booming demand for artificial intelligence (AI), market information advisory firm TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said on Thursday. The contract chipmaker posted US$122.54 billion in revenue, up 36.1 percent from a year earlier, accounting for 69.9 percent of the global market, TrendForce said. Its share was up from 64.4 percent in 2024, it said. TSMC’s closest rival, Samsung Electronics, was a distant second, posting US$12.63 billion in sales, down 3.9 percent from a year earlier, for a 7.2 percent share of the global market. In the
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
At a massive shipyard in North Vancouver, Canadian workers grind metal beams for a powerful new icebreaker crucial to cementing the country’s presence in the increasingly contested arctic. Icebreakers are specialized, expensive vessels able to navigate in the frozen far north. And “this is the crown jewel,” said Eddie Schehr, vice president of production at the Seaspan shipyard. For Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who heads to Norway next Friday to observe arctic defense drills involving troops from 14 NATO states, Canada’s extreme north has emerged as a strategic priority. “Canada is and forever will be an Arctic nation,” he said ahead of
RSS