The Taiwan Memory Co (TMC, 台灣記憶體公司), which was launched by the Ministry of Economic Affairs last week to help reorganize the computer memory chip industry, will seek as much as NT$30 billion (US$867 million) from the government, company chief John Hsuan (宣明智) said yesterday.
TMC plans to ask the National Development Fund for about NT$30 billion in next two months, Hsuan told local cable channel USTV during a press conference in Hsinchu. The investment proposal will need approval from lawmakers, he said.
Hsuan, honorary vice chairman of United Microelectronics Corp (聯電), said the government hoped to spend as little as possible on restructuring the dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chip industry.
Some overseas private funds and a local memory module maker have already expressed interest in investing in TMC, Hsuan said, adding that the company would seek capital from local institutional investors, banks and component makers. He declined to name names, but said he would meet potential investors this week.
To defuse public concern over the creation of the company — and fears that it would be a waste of taxpayer’s money — Hsuan said he would limit the company’s cumulative losses to NT$15 billion.
He plans to visit Japan’s Elpida Memory Inc and Micron Technology Inc of the US in two weeks to discuss patents and intellectual property rights.
He said that TMC was not a short-term rescue program. Its goal was to help Taiwanese DRAM companies stay alive and turn a profit in three years by helping enhance their technological competitiveness, he said.
TMC was a revitalization plan for the DRAM industry, not a consolidation plan or a merger plan, which was what most investors and industry analysts had expected, Hsuan said.
Local DRAM companies had to solve their own financial problems, he said, not rely on TMC.
IN THE AIR: While most companies said they were committed to North American operations, some added that production and costs would depend on the outcome of a US trade probe Leading local contract electronics makers Wistron Corp (緯創), Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), Inventec Corp (英業達) and Compal Electronics Inc (仁寶) are to maintain their North American expansion plans, despite Washington’s 20 percent tariff on Taiwanese goods. Wistron said it has long maintained a presence in the US, while distributing production across Taiwan, North America, Southeast Asia and Europe. The company is in talks with customers to align capacity with their site preferences, a company official told the Taipei Times by telephone on Friday. The company is still in talks with clients over who would bear the tariff costs, with the outcome pending further
A proposed 100 percent tariff on chip imports announced by US President Donald Trump could shift more of Taiwan’s semiconductor production overseas, a Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER) researcher said yesterday. Trump’s tariff policy will accelerate the global semiconductor industry’s pace to establish roots in the US, leading to higher supply chain costs and ultimately raising prices of consumer electronics and creating uncertainty for future market demand, Arisa Liu (劉佩真) at the institute’s Taiwan Industry Economics Database said in a telephone interview. Trump’s move signals his intention to "restore the glory of the US semiconductor industry," Liu noted, saying that
STILL UNCLEAR: Several aspects of the policy still need to be clarified, such as whether the exemptions would expand to related products, PwC Taiwan warned The TAIEX surged yesterday, led by gains in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), after US President Donald Trump announced a sweeping 100 percent tariff on imported semiconductors — while exempting companies operating or building plants in the US, which includes TSMC. The benchmark index jumped 556.41 points, or 2.37 percent, to close at 24,003.77, breaching the 24,000-point level and hitting its highest close this year, Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) data showed. TSMC rose NT$55, or 4.89 percent, to close at a record NT$1,180, as the company is already investing heavily in a multibillion-dollar plant in Arizona that led investors to assume
AI: Softbank’s stake increases in Nvidia and TSMC reflect Masayoshi Son’s effort to gain a foothold in key nodes of the AI value chain, from chip design to data infrastructure Softbank Group Corp is building up stakes in Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the latest reflection of founder Masayoshi Son’s focus on the tools and hardware underpinning artificial intelligence (AI). The Japanese technology investor raised its stake in Nvidia to about US$3 billion by the end of March, up from US$1 billion in the prior quarter, regulatory filings showed. It bought about US$330 million worth of TSMC shares and US$170 million in Oracle Corp, they showed. Softbank’s signature Vision Fund has also monetized almost US$2 billion of public and private assets in the first half of this year,
RSS