Formosa Chemicals & Fibre Corp (台灣化纖) chairman William Wong (王文淵) yesterday announced that he is stepping down from his position and is to be succeeded by the company’s vice chairman, Hung Fu-yuan (洪福源), pending approval by the board of directors.
“This is the last time I’ll be presiding as chairman over the annual shareholders’ meeting of Formosa Chemicals,” Wang said.
The shareholders’ meeting approved the election of 15 new board members, including three independent ones, who are to remain until June 2024.
Formosa Chemicals is one of the four major members of the Formosa Plastic Group (FPG, 台塑集團) owned by the Wang family.
The conglomerate is moving toward a business model in which the four major companies — Formosa Chemicals, Formosa Plastics Corp (台塑), Nan Ya Plastics Corp (南亞塑膠) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) — will be run by non-family members, he said.
However, Wang would remain as group president.
Hung said that under his chairmanship, Formosa Chemicals would continue its efforts to improve management and develop a range of new products, including high-end fiber-reinforced composite materials, to target niche markets.
Formosa Chemicals will also continue to deploy artificial-
intelligence (AI) technology to accurately predict a production model and ensure a reliable production process, he said.
With the aid of AI, Formosa Chemicals last year reduced its carbon emissions by 7.6 percent, Hung said, adding that the company aims to lower this by another 15 percent by the end of 2030.
Hung forecast that Formosa Chemicals would have a strong performance this year, as crude oil prices have risen on the back of cyclical growth.
Concord Securities (康和證券) analyst Kerry Huang (黃志祺) said that the Wang family in 2017 launched a plan to gradually withdraw from management of the group’s companies.
“I do not expect the Wangs’ withdrawal from the management of the four FPG entities to adversely affect their operations, as the new management model was not introduced overnight, but rather after years of planning,” Huang said.
The conglomerate was founded by the late Y.C. Wang (王永慶), who was dubbed in Taiwan as a “god of management” and was the uncle of Wang Wen-yuan.
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