Word: semiconductor
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...surprisingly, the yuan agreements have so far drawn an indifferent response from the private sector. Intel, the world's largest semiconductor maker, has manufacturing facilities in both Malaysia and China. Yet so far Intel hasn't used the currency-swap facility Malaysia has in place with China. Much of Intel's internal trade is still transacted in dollars, according to Loo Cheng Cheng, a Penang-based corporate-affairs executive with Intel. According to Citigroup's Chua, companies in South Korea, which was the first to sign a swap facility with China, have so far also declined to utilize it. Indeed...
...government's Council of Labor Affairs. The council requires that employers pay at least minimum wages and sign agreements with their employees on the terms of the unpaid leave. Even so, workers often feel they have little choice but to accept the policy. Michael Kramer works at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the world's largest semiconductor foundry. Since January, he and all the other 20,000 employees have been required to take at least one day a week of unpaid leave. That's quite a change from a year ago - a time when workers...
...lows reached last November. The Standard & Poor's 500 index, weighed down by financials, fell 4.56%, while the Dow Industrials sank 3.8%, falling to within a fraction of its November 2008 low. Among the hardest hit sectors were bank stocks, down 10%, oil service stocks, down 8.2%, and semiconductor stocks, which fell 6.7%. Gold Mining was among the rare winners Tuesday, with the industry group rising 2.5%. (See pictures of the top 10 scared traders...
...industries have more self-destructive tendencies than the computer memory chip business. When semiconductor prices are high, manufacturers rush headlong into massive investments in new factories, leaving them vulnerable to supply gluts and economic slowdowns. Yet like mosquitoes to one of those electric zappers, chipmakers make the same mistake again and again, creating a binge-and-purge business pattern that occurs with sickening regularity. Of the top 10 largest manufacturers of dynamic random access memory chips, or DRAMs, in 1990, only one - Samsung Electronics of South Korea - remains on that list today...
...state aid, though, won't come without strings attached. ProMOS Technologies and Powerchip Semiconductor have asked the government for aid, and were told they must revise their proposals with more measures aimed at improving their competitiveness and technological capabilities. "The government sees this [aid] as an investment," Lu says, "We don't want to just bail out the industry." The result will likely be consolidation of the country's six major DRAM makers into fewer firms, including possible sales of stakes or entire companies to better capitalized foreign rivals. "It looks like merging is the direction of the industry," says...