BANKING
CHB investigates kickbacks
State-run Chang Hwa Commercial Bank (CHB, 彰化銀行) has completed the first phase of an investigation into a kickback scandal involving two executives at its Dongguang branch in China’s Guangdong Province, the National Treasury Administration said on Thursday. The bank has removed branch manager Chang Chiung-wen (張瓊文) and assistant manager Yu Chih-jen (游志仁) from their positions, the administration said, adding that CHB has turned the case over to prosecutors and started a second-phase investigation into whether other employees should be held accountable. Both Chang and Yu took a total of 50,000 yuan (US$7,956) in kickbacks from clients applying for credit, the bank said on Tuesday last week.
TECHNOLOGY
Bitmain sets up in Hsinchu
Beijing-based Bitmain Technologies Ltd (比特大陸), the world’s largest bitcoin miner, has set up an office in Hsinchu County, the Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported yesterday, citing unnamed sources from the local IC sector. Bitmain has attempted to recruit application-specific IC and artificial intelligence talents from tier-one IC design houses, such as MediaTek Inc (聯發科), MStar Semiconductor Inc (晨星半導體) and Global Unichip Corp (創意電子), by offering them high salaries, the report said.
ELECTRONICS
Ichia revenue grows
Handset keypad maker Ichia Technologies Inc (毅嘉科技) on Thursday posted revenue of NT$602.96 million (US$20.6 million) for last month, up 48.12 percent from NT$407.09 million a year earlier. Revenue increased slightly by 0.73 percent from the prior month’s NT$598.62 million, a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange showed. Last month’s revenue included about NT$468 million in sales of flexible printed circuit integrated components and about NT$142 million from mechanical integrated components, the company said. Recent price increases in raw materials have had little impact on the company’s operation, Ichia said.
STOCK EXCHANGE
JHL plans to delist
JHL Biotech Inc (喜康生技) on Thursday said it has received shareholders’ approval to terminate trading of its shares on the Taipei Exchange’s Emerging Stock Board. On Dec. 8 last year, JHL announced it was considering delisting from the smaller board, as the company plans to list on other stock exchanges in consideration of business expansion. The company on Thursday said that it would soon request permission from the Taipei Exchange to buy back its shares from investors at no less than NT$62.48 per share.
ELECTRONICS
Leatec plans price hike
Given persistent price hikes in upstream materials, Leatec Fine Ceramics Co Ltd (九豪精密陶瓷), which makes chip resistor substrates, has started negotiating prices with major clients, the Chinese-language Commercial Times reported on Thursday, citing industry sources. Leatec Fine Ceramics plans to increase its prices for all ceramic substrates by between 5 percent and 15 percent, the report said, adding that new prices could be applied on all new orders. The company said its substrate capacity would remain fully loaded in the first quarter and hopes its utilization rate remains high during the Lunar New Year holiday, as it is asking employees at its plants in Taoyuan’s Pingjhen District (平鎮) and in Kunshan in China’s Jiangsu Province to work overtime, the newspaper reported.
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday said it would work with US chipmaker Intel Corp to jointly develop and deploy next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and intelligent computing platforms in a move to capture booming demand for AI computing systems. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康), said in a statement that the partnership would combine its global manufacturing scale, system integration expertise and AI data center deployment capabilities with Intel’s strengths in processor architecture, silicon technologies and software ecosystem. The companies said they plan to work on equipment used in AI data centers, including server racks powered by
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat
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