Local prosecutors and Investigation Bureau agents yesterday raided the headquarters of Acer Inc (宏碁) in New Taipei City’s Sijhih District (汐止) and 13 other locations on allegations of insider trading.
New Taipei City prosecutors launched the raids after the local stock market closed. They searched the locations after a media report that a manager responsible for stock investment for Acer, acting on instructions from a superior, sold all the company’s shares just before then-chairman and CEO Wang Jeng-tang (王振堂) resigned in late November last year because of the company’s falling sales and widening losses.
The world’s fourth-largest PC maker saw its revenue for the whole of last year contract by 16.2 percent to NT$360.19 billion (US$11.8 billion), while reporting a record loss of NT$20.58 billion, the third consecutive unprofitable year after losing NT$2.91 billion in 2012 and NT$6.6 billion in 2011.
Acer confirmed the incident later yesterday. The company said in a statement that investigators took away some documents from its headquarters.
The company dismissed a rumor that 10 high-ranking company officials had been summoned for questioning, but said it was cooperating with the investigation process on alleged insider trading as a result of the individual actions of two employees.
“Acer has always operated honestly as a law-abiding company and requires its employees to follow the laws and regulations,” the company said in the statement.
Acer hopes to “clarify the matter as soon as possible,” it added.
Acer shares fell 0.82 percent to NT$18.2 yesterday in Taipei trading and have declined 31.19 percent over the past 12 months, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.
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
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
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