Economic Daily News

Taipei, Taiwan, May 15, 1999, Monday)

(Reported by Owen Lin)

TICP, KINGPAK, ASI, KMEC and E&R, five semiconductor investee companies of the Walden International Investment Group (WIIG), spearheaded Taiwan’s first semiconductor companies’ Alliance. The formation of the Alliance, formally announced yesterday, May 14, aims to promote industry specialization and unity among the semiconductor and semiconductor-related companies. The Alliance will be a medium for the Taiwan companies and industry to augment global production strength and dominance and escalate international competitiveness.

The five companies have unanimously agreed to be the founding companies to form the Alliance and hope that the Alliance will be an intermediary to cultivate the flow of technology exchange among members, co-develop new businesses and services, and enhance the customers and suppliers relationships.

In his speech, Chairman Lip-Bu Tan of WIIG, said that WIIG currently has a total of US$1.25 billion of funds under management, 25% of which was invested in the semiconductor industry. Investments in the U.S. companies are made in IC design. Taiwan investments, on the other hand, are focused on the back-end equipment and packaging and testing industries that have good potential. This investment strategy is expected to strengthen investments in Taiwan with the end purpose of building the global investment foundation that will ultimately result in the development of new technologies and businesses that would greatly benefit Taiwan.

In early stages, WIIG will lead the formulation and drafting of the Alliance’s plans and strategies. WIIG has introduced a new “Platform of Investment” concept in Taiwan. The logic of the new Platform of Investment is to utilize the well-planned strategic and systematic investment concept to a chain of companies that have potential future business alliance. At the same time, these companies must have good prospects. The five founding companies of the Alliance are all investee companies of WIIG. Dr. Tzu-Hwa Hsu, Managing Director of WIIG, is the Chairman of the Board of TICP.

Chairman Lip-Bu Tan indicated that the Alliance would meet regularly to discuss technology trend and create more cooperative businesses among the members. At the same time, this platform investment structure is open and expansive. WIIG is welcoming other companies in the back-end industries to join the Alliance. In the future, IC design companies and other key components or technology companies in the back-end industry and companies in the front-end wafer fabrication industry will also be invited.

The five founding members of the Alliance are yet to be public companies. However, the core management teams of the founding members are all from other publicly listed companies. TICP and KINGPAK are IC packaging companies. TICP’s core team members came from other major packaging companies in Southern Taiwan and each member has about 12 to 15 years of experience in back-end IC industry. KINGPAK is a company focused in the development and production of tiny BGA packaging and was founded by KINGMAX, a veteran in IC cards and memory module manufacturing with famous own brand named products.

The Chairman, Mr. Ares Fang, earned his Ph.D. in EE from Cambridge University. He was founder of several technology companies and was Vice President of United Testing Corp. (UTC), one of the leading memory testing companies in Taiwan. President Danny Liu of ASI worked with Intel, AMI, Teledyne Microelectronics and ASE Testing, the world’s number one testing company, prior to joining ASI.