Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海) chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘) yesterday took to social media to take back the narrative on the company’s track record of keeping its investment promises.
Gou on Facebook lashed out at a report by the Chinese-language Business Today (今周刊) weekly that revisited unrealized Hon Hai investment plans dating back a decade.
The article followed Hon Hai’s pullout from plans to build an LCD plant in Wisconsin that came with one of the largest corporate welfare package in US history on promises that the company would bring in billions of US dolllars of investments and create millions of jobs.
In light of the rise of social media, the company would begin to communicate its progress to the public directly to prevent the spread of misinformation about its investment projects, Gou said.
The company has always striven to meet its commitments and uphold its reputation, but the rollout of its global strategy has been hampered by misconstrued media reports based on piecemeal information, he said.
“All we need is truth, not news,” he added.
The Wisconsin project has been put on the back burner while the state transitions to a new Democratic administration, Gou said.
The project was left in limbo before it got off the ground, Gou said, adding that such setbacks from political shifts are common in the US, as well as Taiwan.
Regarding a promise by the company during former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) term that it would pour NT$80 billion (US$2.59 billion at the current exchange rate) into the Kaohsiung Software Technology Park, of which the magazine said only NT$1.9 billion was realized, Gou said that anyone with basic knowledge of the technology sector would know that the full amount would have been excessive for software development.
The company’s expansion plans in India’s Maharashtra State have been stalled for three years due to difficulties securing land, Gou said, adding that he expects to report progress in the near future.
The company in 2014 reached an agreement with Indonesian President Joko Widodo stipulating that planned factory construction in the country would begin as soon as land is secured, Gou said.
Gou also rejected a claim by Business Today that Hon Hai has fallen short on promises to invest US$12 billion to build a manufacturing facility in in Brazil and that the facility was shuttered in 2015.
The company never committed to the US$12 billion cited in the report, he said, adding that building the iPhone and iPad assembly plant in Brazil, which is still producing phones, cost far less than that.
However, Gou did not respond to the report’s coverage on Hon Hai’s activities in Vietnam.
The magazine said that Hon Hai adjusted its expansion plans in Vietnam after some of its establishment permits were revoked in 2015, as it had failed to fully meet its pledges seven years after gaining government approvals.
Time would tell if Hon Hai would deliver on its promise to build an iPhone plant in Vietnam, which it made in December last year, the report said.
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,
Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday said the DRAM supply crunch could extend through 2028, as the artificial intelligence (AI) boom has led the world’s major memory makers to dramatically reduce production of standard DRAM and allocate a significant portion of their capacity for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips. The most severe supply constraints would stretch to the first half of next year due to “very limited” increases in new DRAM capacity worldwide, Nanya Technology president Lee Pei-ing (李培瑛) told a news briefing. The company plans to increase monthly 12-inch wafer capacity to 20,000 in the first half of 2028 after a
Taiwan has enough crude oil reserves for more than 100 days and sufficient natural gas reserves for more than 11 days, both above the regulatory safety requirement, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday, adding that the government would prioritize domestic price stability as conflicts in the Middle East continue. Overall, energy supply for this month is secure, and the government is continuing efforts to ensure sufficient supply for next month, Kung told reporters after meeting with representatives from business groups at the ministry in Taipei. The ministry has been holding daily cross-ministry meetings at the Executive Yuan to ensure
Property transactions in the nation’s six special municipalities plunged last month, as a lengthy Lunar New Year holiday combined with ongoing credit tightening dampened housing market activity, data compiled by local land administration offices released on Monday showed. The six cities recorded a total of 10,480 property transfers last month, down 42.5 percent from January and marking the second-lowest monthly level on record, the data showed. “The sharp drop largely reflected seasonal factors and tighter credit conditions,” Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋) deputy research manager Chen Chin-ping (陳金萍) said. The nine-day Lunar New Year holiday fell in February this year, reducing
RSS