The Japanese government would begin preparing a bill to expand financial aid aimed at increasing local production of semiconductors by domestic and foreign companies, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported yesterday.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida plans to submit the bill to an ordinary Diet session this year, the daily reported, citing people it did not identify who belong to the administration and ruling party.
Global chip shortages in industries ranging from automotive to entertainment have slowed growth in the world economy as it attempts to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) said earlier this month that it would build a chip factory in Japan’s Kumamoto Prefecture, with a subsidiary of Sony Group Corp becoming a minority shareholder in the venture.
The bill would also strengthen the government’s ability to check the country of origin of any computer equipment it purchases, with a goal to block China-made computer devices before they were installed in a national security capacity, the Yomiuri reported.
Separately, Samsung Electronics Co vice chairman Jay Y. Lee yesterday left for Canada and the US in his first overseas business trip since his parole in August, Yonhap News agency reported.
Samsung’s de facto chief told reporters at an airport that he would meet with “various partners” in the US, Yonhap said.
While it is unclear what Lee would do in his first business travel to the country in five years, he could visit Samsung’s chip plant site in Austin, Texas, amid the shortage of semiconductors and might finalize the selection of the site for the firm’s new US chip plant, according to the report.
Lee is also to visit Boston, where Moderna Inc’s headquarters are located. Samsung Biologics Co makes the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.
Mercuries Life Insurance Co (三商美邦人壽) shares surged to a seven-month high this week after local media reported that E.Sun Financial Holding Co (玉山金控) had outbid CTBC Financial Holding Co (中信金控) in the financially strained insurer’s ongoing sale process. Shares of the mid-sized life insurer climbed 5.8 percent this week to NT$6.72, extending a nearly 18 percent rally over the past month, as investors bet on the likelihood of an impending takeover. The final round of bidding closed on Thursday, marking a critical step in the 32-year-old insurer’s search for a buyer after years of struggling to meet capital adequacy requirements. Local media reports
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