Flat-panel maker AU Optronics Corp (友達光電) chairman Lee Kun-yao (李焜耀) yesterday again denied price-fixing allegations that were leveled at the company and six of its executives in a US Department of Justice (DOJ) indictment last week.
Lee said AU Optronics would fight the charges to clear its name and protect its reputation and credibility.
A federal grand jury in San Francisco accused AU Optronics, its Houston-based US subsidiary and six executives of participating in a conspiracy to fix prices of TFT-LCD panels from September 2001 to December 2006.
If convicted, the AU Optronics executives could each face up to 10 years in prison and a US$1 million fine, while the company could be hit with a fine of US$100 million.
Lee, who is also the chairman of consumer electronics manufacturer Qisda Corp (佳世達), said at Qisda’s annual shareholders’ meeting yesterday that AU Optronics is the first corporation to fight the US charges.
He said there was no evidence to back up allegations that AU Optronics participated in price-fixing, adding that the company would not plead guilty to the charges.
Six electronics firms have pleaded guilty in connection with the conspiracy case and a total of 17 executives have been charged.
In a statement issued immediately after the indictment was handed down, AU Optronics said it was disappointed with the DOJ’s move since it had cooperated with the department and other authorities in their investigation into the price-fixing allegations.
The company said the charges would not have a “materially adverse impact” on its day-to-day operations.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
RSS