Gamemag Interactive Inc (磁力線上), an affiliate of troubled game developer XPEC Entertainment Inc (樂陞科技), has shut down due to financial woes involving its chairman Aaron Hsu (許金龍), affecting about 100 employees.
“The company has run out of funds amid poor demand. As the chairman is no longer able to run the company, the shareholders cannot support the firm anymore,” Gamemag said in an undated internal letter to its employees.
Chiang Pao-chia (蔣寶夏), who referred to herself in the letter as the representative of Gamemag’s largest shareholder, said that she will help negotiate with XPEC for employees who want to transfer there.
“Since the company is unable to pay wages this month, we suggest employees seek new job opportunities as soon as possible,” Chiang said.
Although Gamemag has shut down its Web site, the Ministry of Finance’s tax data show that the company was still in operation as of yesterday, which means the firm’s formal closure application has not been processed.
Gamemag was XPEC’s research and development unit for PC and mobile games.
It became an affiliate in January 2013 with paid-in capital of NT$200 million (US$6.49 million at the current exchange rate), according to data from the Ministry of Economic Affairs.
XPEC sold its shares in Gamemag several times over the past four years to JAFCO Asia, a Japanese venture capital firm, and Minseng Plastics Industrial Co Ltd (明盛塑膠), a Taiwanese film and photograph album maker, local media reported.
XPEC now only holds a 10 percent share in Gamemag, but Hsu remains chairman of both firms, according to XPEC’s annual report to shareholders in June last year.
Hsu has faced trouble since the failed sale of XPEC stock amounting to NT$4.86 billion, or a 25 percent stake, to a Japanese firm, Bai Chi Gan Tou Digital Entertainment Co (百尺竿頭), in August last year.
Hsu, XPEC’s former acting chairman Peter Lee (李伯衡), chief financial officer Hsieh Tung-po (謝東波) and seven other people were indicted on Jan. 24 by the Taipei District Court over alleged violations of the Securities Exchange Act (證券交易法) to manipulate XPEC’s stock price over the botched deal with Bai Chi.
XPEC’s trading was suspended by the Taipei Exchange on Nov. 17 last year after it failed to resubmit its financial statements for the second and third quarters.
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
PROJECTION: TSMC said it expects strong growth this year, with revenue in US dollars projected to grow by about 30 percent, outperforming the industry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported consolidated sales last month reached NT$317.66 billion (US$9.98 billion), the highest ever for the month of February, driven by robust demand for chips built using the company’s advanced 3-nanometer (3nm) process. Last month’s figure was up 22.2 percent from a year earlier, but fell 20.8 percent from January, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. For the first two months of the year, TSMC posted cumulative sales of NT$718.91 billion, up 29.9 percent from a year earlier. Analysts attributed the growth to sustained global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products
RSS