EVA Airways Corp (EVA, 長榮航空), the nation’s second-largest airline, announced yesterday that its president, Chang Kuo-wei (張國煒), has been promoted to chairman of the company, taking effect on Tuesday next week.
Chang will replace James Jeng (鄭光遠), who will stay on as a member of the company’s board of directors, but will also take over as the chairman of the EVA’s subsidiary, Uni Airways Corp (立榮航空).
EVA’s board also appointed Austin Cheng (鄭傳義), executive vice president of the airline’s project division, to take over the position left vacant by Chang.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
“The airline industry has been highly competitive over the past few years, which put some pressure on him [Chang] to take the position of chairman,” EVA spokesperson Nieh Kuo-wei (聶國維) said by telephone yesterday.
However, Nieh was upbeat about the carrier’s potential sales performance and profitability under Chang’s leadership.
Nieh said the carrier’s priority is to officially join Star Alliance — the largest airline alliance in the world — by the first half of next year, and the company has been already begun the integration process with other members of the alliance.
Photo: CNA
Chang, 42, is the youngest son of Evergreen Group (長榮集團) founder Chang Yung-fa (張榮發). He has been the president of EVA since December 2010.
Last month, Chang said EVA would focus on short-haul and medium-haul regional lines next year, eyeing the greater potential in cross-strait routes amid a stronger economic sentiment in Asia’s emerging markets.
The carrier also announced plans to sell NT$6.5 billion (US$223.14 million) in bonds next year to repay loans.
The amount of debt issued next year is set to be the same as this year, with the company not opting out of announcing additional bond plans next year.
In other news, China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空), the nation’s largest carrier, yesterday introduced new in-flight food services for economy-class passengers in a bid to boost sales.
The new Chinese-styled meals, designed by four famous Taiwanese chefs, will be offered on long-haul routes and regional routes in Northeast Asia from February next year, CAL said in a statement.
CAL president Sun Hung-hsiang (孫洪祥) said in October that he maintained a cautiously optimistic view of the company’s profitability in the fourth quarter, with the movement of global oil prices and the performance of the cargo industry being the greatest areas of uncertainty in the sector.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to