Winston Wong (王文洋), son of Formosa Plastics Group’s (台塑集團) late founder Wang Yung-ching (王永慶), sued in Hong Kong to recover more than US$4 billion in assets for the estate of his father, once Taiwan’s richest man.
Defendants named in the suit include three of Wang’s half--sisters — Susan (王瑞華), Sandy (王瑞瑜) and Diana Wang (王瑞慧) — as well as former employees of Formosa Plastics — Hung Wen Hsiung (洪文雄) and Jao Chien Fang (饒見方) — who were entrusted to manage Wang Yung-ching’s personal finances, according to a press statement issued by Wong yesterday.
The suit alleges that the defendants used a Hong Kong-registered company called Hua Yang Investment (HK) Ltd (華陽投資) to wrongly “siphon off” assets, including an interest in a coal power plant and a hotel in China, from the estate of Wang -Yung--ching. Wang Yung-ching’s Taiwanese assets were valued at US$1.7 billion, Wong said in the statement.
An independent global investigation has identified total assets of more than US$17 billion, according to the statement.
Two calls to office of Susan Wang, Formosa Plastics Group executive board vice chairman, were not answered.
Wang died in the US in 2008 at the age of 91. He started selling rice in 1932 as his first business, before founding Formosa Plastics Corp (台塑), a PVC maker, in 1954. The company expanded into Formosa Plastics Group, Taiwan’s biggest diversified industrial company.
Wong previously sued in New Jersey to be appointed as administrator of the estate of his father, who died without a will. His fortune has also been the subject of a lawsuit in Taiwan.
Taiwan’s technology protection rules prohibits Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) from producing 2-nanometer chips abroad, so the company must keep its most cutting-edge technology at home, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. Kuo made the remarks in response to concerns that TSMC might be forced to produce advanced 2-nanometer chips at its fabs in Arizona ahead of schedule after former US president Donald Trump was re-elected as the next US president on Tuesday. “Since Taiwan has related regulations to protect its own technologies, TSMC cannot produce 2-nanometer chips overseas currently,” Kuo said at a meeting of the legislature’s
GEOPOLITICAL ISSUES? The economics ministry said that political factors should not affect supply chains linking global satellite firms and Taiwanese manufacturers Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) asked Taiwanese suppliers to transfer manufacturing out of Taiwan, leading to some relocating portions of their supply chain, according to sources employed by and close to the equipment makers and corporate documents. A source at a company that is one of the numerous subcontractors that provide components for SpaceX’s Starlink satellite Internet products said that SpaceX asked their manufacturers to produce outside of Taiwan because of geopolitical risks, pushing at least one to move production to Vietnam. A second source who collaborates with Taiwanese satellite component makers in the nation said that suppliers were directly
Top Taiwanese officials yesterday moved to ease concern about the potential fallout of Donald Trump’s return to the White House, making a case that the technology restrictions promised by the former US president against China would outweigh the risks to the island. The prospect of Trump’s victory in this week’s election is a worry for Taipei given the Republican nominee in the past cast doubt over the US commitment to defend it from Beijing. But other policies championed by Trump toward China hold some appeal for Taiwan. National Development Council Minister Paul Liu (劉鏡清) described the proposed technology curbs as potentially having
EXPORT CONTROLS: US lawmakers have grown more concerned that the US Department of Commerce might not be aggressively enforcing its chip restrictions The US on Friday said it imposed a US$500,000 penalty on New York-based GlobalFoundries Inc, the world’s third-largest contract chipmaker, for shipping chips without authorization to an affiliate of blacklisted Chinese chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯). The US Department of Commerce in a statement said GlobalFoundries sent 74 shipments worth US$17.1 million to SJ Semiconductor Corp (盛合晶微半導體), an affiliate of SMIC, without seeking a license. Both SMIC and SJ Semiconductor were added to the department’s trade restriction Entity List in 2020 over SMIC’s alleged ties to the Chinese military-industrial complex. SMIC has denied wrongdoing. Exports to firms on the list