Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC, 台灣高鐵) yesterday reshuffled its 15-member board at a shareholders’ meeting, with government-appointed representatives taking up nine seats — including three seats for external directors — while five of the railway project’s original shareholders retained their seats.
The newly elected board made former CEO Ou Chin-der (歐晉德), who replaced former chairwoman Nita Ing (殷琪) in late September, its new chairman with a three-year term.
The government-appointed board members include Pan Wenent (潘文炎), representing the CTCI Foundation (中技社), and Hu Mao-lin (胡懋麟), chairman of the state-owned Taiwan Sugar Corp (台糖). Academics Lin Chen-kuo (林振國), George Chen (陳世圯) and Victor Liu (劉維琪) were appointed as independent directors.
During its shareholder meeting yesterday morning, Ou said he would turn around the company’s financial performance by coming up with a healthier operational plan, boosting passenger traffic and negotiating new loans at lower interest rates.
In response to shareholders’ questions, Ou said the company needed more than 140,000 passengers per day to break even, from its current average of 87,000 passengers per day.
He also addressed recent concerns about the company’s highly paid foreign executives, some of whom he said have submitted their resignations in the wake of criticism over their high salaries.
Ou said the company hoped to retain the foreign executives, who made up just 2.6 percent of the company’s total workforce as of August, down from 3.7 percent last year and a reduction of more than 30 percent from the project’s early years.
These executives, whose salaries accounted for 1.9 percent of the company’s total personnel expenditure, remain indispensable to daily operations, especially the railway system’s maintenance, which is of great importance to passenger safety, he added.
The foreign executives are highly sought-after by railway contractors in other countries and have been offered up to double the salary they earn at THSRC, Ou said.
Nevertheless, he said the company would gradually reduce the number of foreign executives by June.
A company source, who declined to be identified, yesterday said the company was expected to negotiate terms including interest rates and maturities with creditor banks including its main lender, Bank of Taiwan (台灣銀行), to finalize a NT$382 billion (US$11.8 billion) syndicated loan “by the end of this month or no later than the year’s end.”
For its government-funded loan of NT$308.3 billion, the company hopes to pay a floating interest rate that would be pegged to the rate for one-year postal deposits and would be slightly lower than the averaged rate of 2.6 percent on its old loans, the source said.
A fixed rate of 0.8 percent on top of the rate for one-year postal deposits, currently at 1 percent, would be levied on the remaining loan of NT$73.7 billion, the source said, adding that the company was further negotiating for a ceiling on the rates if they were to be substantially increased.
With an approval rating of just two percent, Peruvian President Dina Boluarte might be the world’s most unpopular leader, according to pollsters. Protests greeted her rise to power 29 months ago, and have marked her entire term — joined by assorted scandals, investigations, controversies and a surge in gang violence. The 63-year-old is the target of a dozen probes, including for her alleged failure to declare gifts of luxury jewels and watches, a scandal inevitably dubbed “Rolexgate.” She is also under the microscope for a two-week undeclared absence for nose surgery — which she insists was medical, not cosmetic — and is
CAUTIOUS RECOVERY: While the manufacturing sector returned to growth amid the US-China trade truce, firms remain wary as uncertainty clouds the outlook, the CIER said The local manufacturing sector returned to expansion last month, as the official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose 2.1 points to 51.0, driven by a temporary easing in US-China trade tensions, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The PMI gauges the health of the manufacturing industry, with readings above 50 indicating expansion and those below 50 signaling contraction. “Firms are not as pessimistic as they were in April, but they remain far from optimistic,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said at a news conference. The full impact of US tariff decisions is unlikely to become clear until later this month
GROWING CONCERN: Some senior Trump administration officials opposed the UAE expansion over fears that another TSMC project could jeopardize its US investment Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is evaluating building an advanced production facility in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and has discussed the possibility with officials in US President Donald Trump’s administration, people familiar with the matter said, in a potentially major bet on the Middle East that would only come to fruition with Washington’s approval. The company has had multiple meetings in the past few months with US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and officials from MGX, an influential investment vehicle overseen by the UAE president’s brother, the people said. The conversations are a continuation of talks that
Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯), an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designer specializing in artificial-intelligence (AI) chips, yesterday said that small-volume production of 3-nanometer (nm) chips for a key customer is on track to start by the end of this year, dismissing speculation about delays in producing advanced chips. As Alchip is transitioning from 7-nanometer and 5-nanometer process technology to 3 nanometers, investors and shareholders have been closely monitoring whether the company is navigating through such transition smoothly. “We are proceeding well in [building] this generation [of chips]. It appears to me that no revision will be required. We have achieved success in designing