Taipei Financial Center Corp (TFCC, 台北金融大樓公司), operator of Taipei 101, yesterday appointed company president Harace Lin (林鴻明) to take over temporarily after former chairwoman Diana Chen (陳敏薰) stepped down.
The shuffle came after Chen tendered her resignation to the board yesterday. Lin has served as TFCC president since 1997.
Late last month, Chen offered a verbal resignation to the company’s board after the Ministry of Finance said it intended to replace Chen amid serious concern about her competence.
The chairwoman also defended herself amid allegations that she gave bribes to former first lady Wu Su-jen (吳淑珍) to win her position.
Chen once attended courses at Ketagalan Institute, a think tank with close links to former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
The ministry has a say in management as it holds a major stake in TFCC via state-controlled firms such as China Development Industrial Bank (中華開發工銀) and Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信).
The TFCC board will hold a meeting to elect a new chairperson in the short term, TFCC said in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
“No timetable has been set yet,” said Michael Liu (劉家豪), assistant vice president of the TFCC public relations department, by telephone yesterday. “The board members will not meet until they have come up with a candidate.”
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last