Innolux Corp (群創) yesterday said company president Wang Jyh-chao (王志超) is to step down from his post, amid speculation that he is to play a greater role in parent company Hon Hai Precision Industry Co’s (鴻海精密) latest push into LCD panel manufacturing in China.
As part of Innolux’s management shuffle, the board of directors yesterday also approved the promotion of executive vice president Robert Shiao (蕭志弘) to succeed Wang.
Wang is to stay on as chairman, while Shiao will work as chief operating officer to help Innolux accelerate its global expansion, the Miaoli-based flat-panel maker said in a statement.
The personnel adjustment was to bolster the firm’s corporate governance practices, as well as cope with expansion of Hon Hai Technology Group (鴻海集團), according to the statement.
Hon Hai Precision is the flagship unit of the group. Innolux did not elaborate on Wang’s revised role.
The company also did not comment on recent speculation that Wang was tapped to help Hon Hai build a newly announced 10.5G LCD plant in Guangzhou, China.
Early this month, Sakai Display Products Corp (SDP) — in which Sharp Corp and Hon Hai chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘) holds a stake — held a groundbreaking ceremony for a 61 billion yuan (US$882.6 million) project to develop a display compound that consists of a 10.5G LCD panel plant and a ultra-high-resolution 8K TV plant.
The 10.5G LCD plant, jointly invested in by SDP and the Guangzhou Provincial Government, is to produce 65-inch and 75-inch TV panels when it starts operations in 2019.
“Hon Hai needs to seek help from LCD veterans to build and manage the advanced 10.5G LCD plant in Guangzhou, as well as sell the panels it produces,” TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) LCD industry senior analyst Eric Chiou (邱宇彬) said on the telephone.
“Wang is likely to be involved in the broader LCD panel projects of the group, but it is more probable that Wang will play the role as a bridge between Innolux and Sharp in managing capacity allocation, or give a hand to market Sharp-brand TVs in different regions, such as China,” Chiou said.
Innolux makes 65-inch and 39.5-inch TV panels at its 6G and 7.5G plants, a complementary panel offering to Sharp, Chiou said.
With no major capacity expansion plans in recent years, Innolux has been working on enhancing its manufacturing efficiency and profitability by introducing automation systems, of which Shiao has been in charge, according to the company.
Innolux shares yesterday remained unchanged at NT$12.15 in Taipei trading, while the TAIEX dropped 0.04 percent.
The London Metal Exchange (LME) discovered bags of stones instead of the nickel that underpinned a handful of its contracts at a warehouse in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in a revelation that would deliver another blow to confidence in the embattled exchange. The amount of metal represents just 0.14 percent of live nickel inventories on the LME, worth about US$1.3 million at current prices, so the immediate effect on the metals markets is limited. However, the shock announcement has much wider implications. In an industry riddled with scandals, the LME’s contracts are viewed as unquestionably safe. The news that even a few of
Oil on Friday posted its worst weekly loss since the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic as banking turmoil poisoned investor sentiment. West Texas Intermediate for April delivery dropped 2.36 percent to US$66.74 per barrel, falling 12.96 percent for the week, the largest drop in almost three years. Brent crude for May delivery fell 2.32 percent to US$72.97, posting a weekly loss of 11.85 percent. The failure of Silicon Valley Bank and troubles at Credit Suisse Group AG drove investors from risk assets, with oil-options covering accelerating the sell-off. “Crude action this week reminded many of how quickly the commodity can be decimated by
US-based mobile chip designer Qualcomm Inc yesterday opened a manufacturing engineering and testing center in Hsinchu, expanding its presence in Taiwan. Qualcomm also expects to accelerate its purchases in Taiwan, which already rose to NT$240 billion (US$7.9 billion) last year, up from NT$90 billion five years earlier, and should hit NT$300 billion next year. The center is to provide services for the supply chain in the semiconductor industry, Roawen Chen (陳若文), senior vice president and chief supply chain and operations officer of Qualcomm, said at the facility’s inauguration ceremony. It is Qualcomm’s largest and most advanced engineering testing center outside of the company’s
Huawei Technologies Co (華為) has replaced more than 13,000 parts in its products that were hit by US trade sanctions, the Chinese tech giant’s founder said, according to a speech transcript from last month posted on Friday by a Chinese university. Ren Zhengfei (任正非) said Huawei had over the past three years replaced the 13,000 components with domestic Chinese substitutes, and had redesigned 4,000 circuit boards for its products, the transcript posted by Shanghai Jiao Tong University said. “As of now, our circuit board [production] has stabilized, because we have a supply of domestically produced components,” Ren said. He did not give details
RSS