President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文)
Taipei, Dec. 12 (CNA) President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said Monday the government is determined to fully support the local semiconductor sector, and stressed it was the right time for integrated circuit firms to invest in Taiwan.
Tsai said the government has put the IC industry's development at the top of its economic agenda and will try its best to provide stable supplies of water, power and land so that IC makers can expand within Taiwan.
The president made the comments while addressing a ceremony in which U.S.-based dynamic random access memory (DRAM) giant Micron Technology Inc. celebrated a deal to acquire its Taiwanese counterpart Inotera Memories Inc. (華亞科).
According to Micron, the ceremony reflected the U.S. firm's determination to forge closer ties with Taiwan's semiconductor sector.
Micron previously owned a 33 percent stake in Inotera and completed its acquisition of the remaining 67 percent stake for NT$130 billion (US$4.08 billion) on Dec. 6 to bring the Taiwanese company fully under its corporate umbrella.
After the takeover deal, Inotera became a 100 percent subsidiary of Micron's subsidiary in Taiwan -- Micron Semiconductor Taiwan Co.
At the ceremony held in Taoyuan, where Inotera is headquartered, Tsai said the city will serve as a base for the upgrading of Taiwanese industries, and she believed the city and the Executive Yuan will lend their full support to Micron to expand its production in Taiwan.
Tsai said Micron's deal to take over Inotera reinforced Taiwan's faith that it can become Asia's Silicon Valley. In turn, she said, Micron is expected to take advantage of local advances in memory chip research and development to strengthen its long-term investment return.
She said she was glad that Micron expanded its investment in Taiwan at a critical moment when the country is gearing up to transform and upgrade its industries to speed up the pace of economic growth.
Tsai said she hoped Micron can help Taiwan widen its pool of high-tech talent in the semiconductor industry and create more job openings in the country, which will expose more Taiwanese employees in the high-tech sector to more advanced know-how.
Before the acquisition of the 67 percent stake in Inotera, Micron and Nanya Technology Corp. (南亞科) had jointly held the company. Nanya Technology is the DRAM manufacturing arm of conglomerate Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團).
The acquisition is expected to help Nanya Technology boost its earnings per share by NT$6.50 for 2016, analysts said.
Shares of Nanya Technology soared 3.75 percent to close at NT$47.00, outperforming the broader market, where the weighted index on the Taiwan Stock Exchange ended down 0.46 percent Monday.
Inotera was delisted from the exchange on Dec. 6.
(By Bien Chin-feng, Jackson Chang and Frances Huang)
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