Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC, 台灣高鐵) said yesterday that the three independent directors on its board had agreed to halve their salaries amid a public uproar over their high pay when the company’s finances remain firmly in the red.
The company said in a statement that its board held a meeting yesterday at which independent directors Lin Chen-kuo (林振國), Victor Liu (劉維琪) and George Chen (陳世圯) voluntarily agreed to cut their basic annual salaries to NT$900,000 (US$28,000) from NT$1.8 million.
THSRC said the cut in basic salaries would be retroactive to January this year, according to the statement.
The three independent directors, appointed by the government to sit on the rail company’s board, have been called “government fat cats” and criticized for being simultaneously paid by multiple public agencies.
While the government had asked the company to solve the issue as soon as possible, THSRC failed to address the matter at its annual general meeting last month, even though both Liu and Chen later told local media that they would be willing to have their salaries halved or even do their jobs for free.
Lin will still earn NT$1.62 million a year at THSRC as he also chairs the company’s audit committee, which pays him NT$720,000 a year. Both Liu and Chen will make NT$1.26 million each a year, as Liu heads the firm’s finance committee, for which he receives an annual salary of NT$360,000 and Chen the corporate governance committee, which also provides annual compensation of NT$360,000.
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday said it would work with US chipmaker Intel Corp to jointly develop and deploy next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and intelligent computing platforms in a move to capture booming demand for AI computing systems. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康), said in a statement that the partnership would combine its global manufacturing scale, system integration expertise and AI data center deployment capabilities with Intel’s strengths in processor architecture, silicon technologies and software ecosystem. The companies said they plan to work on equipment used in AI data centers, including server racks powered by
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat
RSS