Hon Hai plans GDR
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the world’s largest contract maker of electronics, plans to sell as many as 370 million new shares overseas.
Hon Hai will seek shareholder approval for the issue of global depositary receipts at its annual shareholders’ meeting on April 16, the Taipei-based company said in a stock exchange filing on Wednesday.
The company will raise as much as NT$21.8 billion (US$650 million) from the share sale, based on the stock’s closing price on Wednesday.
Taishin delays share offer
Taishin Financial Holding Co (台新金控), the nation’s second-worst performing financial stock last year, yesterday postponed a share sale plan after halving the offer.
The company said on Nov. 27 that the board had approved plans to sell 1.4 billion shares in the first quarter to raise funds to boost its capital adequacy ratio.
However, in a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday, Taishin Financial said it would only offer 700 million new shares at NT$5 each to raise NT$3.5 billion (US$104 million) and would delay the issuance to the second quarter,
Siliconware books losses
Siliconware Precision Industries Co (矽品精密), the nation’s second-largest chip packaging and testing company, said yesterday it booked a loss of NT$2.6 billion (US$77.5 million) to reflect the decline in value of its investments in ChipMOS Technologies (Bermuda) Ltd (南茂科技) and Phoenix Precision Technology Corp (全懋精密).
Siliconware Precision said in a statement it booked a loss of NT$2.14 billion for its holdings in ChipMOS shares, and a loss of NT$454 million for its Phoenix holdings.
Singapore unveils stimulus
The Singaporean government unveiled a multibillion dollar plan to boost spending and cut taxes in a bid to ease the worst recession in the city-state’s history.
The government will lower corporate taxes, subsidize wages, guarantee bank loans and spend more on infrastructure as part of the S$20.5 billion (US$13.6 billion) stimulus package, Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam said in a televised speech yesterday.
The spending surge will widen this year’s fiscal deficit to a record for Singapore and will be partly paid for by tapping S$4.9 billion in reserves, he said.
Singapore on Wednesday slashed its growth forecast for this year, saying the economy could shrink as much as 5 percent as global demand for the country’s exports collapses.
Nokia’s Q4 profit plummets
Nokia, the world’s leading mobile phone maker, yesterday reported a nearly 69 percent drop in its fourth-quarter net profit to 576 million euros (US$749 million) amid falling sales and lower prices for its handsets.
Nokia chief executive officer Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said the global financial crisis had dampened demand for mobile phones, but insisted the company would continue to invest in future growth, although it needed to cut costs.
“We are taking action to reduce overall costs and to preserve our strong capital structure. This is clearly our top priority in the current economic environment,” Kallasvuo said in a statement.
Kallasvuo said the financial crisis had made the macroeconomic situation worse in recent weeks and the company cut its guidance for this year for global mobile device volumes.
Nokia said it now expects such volumes to decline some 10 percent this year from last year’s level compared with its previous forecast of a 5 percent fall.
NetApp tops employers
NetApp tops the list of the 100 best companies to work for, most of which have open positions and are hiring, Fortune magazine said yesterday.
Coming in second on Fortune’s 12th annual list was Edward Jones, followed by Boston Consulting Group. The list was published online on fortune.com/bestcompanies and contained in an issue set to hit newsstands on Monday.
NetApp, based in Sunnyvale, California, provides storage and data management services to businesses.
It employs 5,000 people and topped the list because of its “employee enthusiasm for the legendary egalitarian culture,” Fortune said.
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) and Episil Technologies Inc (漢磊) yesterday announced plans to jointly build an 8-inch fab to produce silicon carbide (SiC) chips through an equity acquisition deal. SiC chips offer higher efficiency and lower energy loss than pure silicon chips, and they are able to operate at higher temperatures. They have become crucial to the development of electric vehicles, artificial intelligence data centers, green energy storage and industrial devices. Vanguard, a contract chipmaker focused on making power management chips and driver ICs for displays, is to acquire a 13 percent stake in Episil for NT$2.48 billion (US$77.1 million).
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
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