TSMC no longer a Taiwanese firm but a global one: Chairman

Taipei, Sept. 11 (CNA) With its international expansion, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) is no longer a Taiwanese company but has become a global one, the chipmaker cited Chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) as saying Wednesday.

In a statement, TSMC said Wei made the remarks in an internal letter to the company's employees in one of the recent events, adding that the chipmaker is building a working environment focusing on "diversity, equality and inclusive" values.

As a global enterprise, Wei said, TSMC is pushing for diversified communication channels with openness and empathy to give its employees better working experiences.

Wei encouraged his colleagues to tell the truth in a sincere manner by taking into account other people's feelings while communicating with each other to avoid unnecessary misunderstandings.

Currently, TSMC has achieved enviable success but there is still room for improvement in terms of respect and admiration, Wei said.

In recent years, TSMC has intensified its efforts in going globally to ease impact resulting from escalating geopolitical tensions.

In the United States, TSMC is building two advanced fabs in Arizona and the first one is scheduled to start mass production in the first half of 2025, using the sophisticated 4 nanometer process, while the second one is slated to mass produce wafers using the 3nm and 2nm processes in 2028.

TSMC has announced a plan to build a third fab in Arizona using the 2nm process or more advanced technology with its total investments in Arizona expected to top US$65 billion.

Due to different working cultures, several former and current employees of TSMC in the U.S. were quoted by Fortune magazine last year complaining about the company's "brutal" corporate culture, referring to long working hours, while the company has pledged to provide employees with a balanced life environment.

In his internal letter, Wei expressed gratitude to the company's more than 70,000 employees worldwide as TSMC reported good results in the first half of this year after going through inventory adjustments in the global semiconductor industry.

In the first six months of this year, TSMC raked in NT$18.25 (US$0.57) in earnings per share, up almost 22 percent from NT$14.99 a year earlier.

In response to Wei's remarks, Minister of Economic Affairs Kuo Jyh-huei (郭智輝) said TSMC has extended its reach to the U.S., Japan and Germany but Taiwan remained its base.

Kuo said TSMC is expected to dispatch engineers overseas to meet its needs for global expansion so its employees need to cultivate an inclusive working attitude to cooperate with their foreign colleagues.

In Japan, TSMC has opened a fab in Kumamoto and has announced a plan to build a second one with a total investment expected to surpass US$20 billion through joint venture Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing, Inc. (JASM).

In August, TSMC broke ground on a 12-inch wafer fab in Dresden, Germany, through a joint venture called European Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (ESMC), which includes Robert Bosch GmbH, Infineon Technologies AG and NXP Semiconductors N.V., with the total investments to top 11 billion euros.