David Lo (駱文仁), former vice chairman of E-Ten Information Systems Co (倚天資訊), and Wistron Corp (緯創) chief legal officer Michael Wu (吳重銘) were released on NT$500,000 (US$15,200) bail each early yesterday morning, after being called by Taipei prosecutors for questioning the previous night on allegations of insider trading.
Six others including E-Ten chairman Simon Hwang (黃杉榕) and president Wayne Ma (馬惠群) were released without bail, the Chinese-language udn.com reported yesterday, citing people at the Taipei Prosecutors’ Office.
Acer Inc (宏碁), the world’s third-largest personal computer vendor, yesterday confirmed that Taipei prosecutors searched its wholly-owned E-Ten, one of the nation’s leading handheld device makers, on Friday.
Acer chief financial officer Howard Chan (詹浩) said in a statement yesterday that Acer and E-Ten are not related to the investigation but would cooperate.
He said the investigation would not negatively impact on Acer’s business or financial performance.
He declined to elaborate on the details of the alleged case of insider trading, citing confidentiality amid the ongoing investigation, the statement showed.
FOUNDER FEELS ‘REGRET’
Acer founder Stan Shih (施振榮), meanwhile, told reporters yesterday that he felt regret about the suspected insider trading at E-Ten, the Chinese-language online NOWnews.com reported yesterday.
Shih was approached by reporters for comment on the case while he attended a multimedia show at the Taipei World Trade Center Exhibition Hall 1.
On Friday, Taipei prosecutors led by Huang Li-wei (黃立維) searched 10 places, including E-Ten’s office and the residences of key suspects, the Central News Agency reported.
The report said prosecutors were looking for evidence related to alleged insider trading that involves Acer’s announcement on March 3 last year of a plan to take over E-Ten as the PC company aimed to enter the mobile phone business.
Acer said at the time that it planned to acquire E-Ten for NT$9 billion via a share swap and its offer represented a 22.5-percent premium over its closing share price of NT$55.7 that day. Shares of E-Ten were delisted from the local bourse on Sept. 1 of last year.
State-run CNA said Lo and other suspects allegedly bought E-Ten shares at prices of little more than NT$30 per share before Acer’s takeover announcement and in the following days gained tens of millions of dollars in profit by selling up to 600,000 E-Ten shares at more than NT$40 each.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts