The Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC, 台灣高鐵) said yesterday it will pay Eurotrain US$65 million in compensation for dumping the consortium and choosing a Japanese consortium to build Taiwan's high-speed rail system.
THSRC posted the settlement agreement on the Taiwan Stock Market online bulletin board.
"Following arbitration by an international arbitration court, THSRC agrees to pay US$65 million to Eurotrain, which -- plus interest -- totals US$89 million," the document said.
THSRC's press office said the arbitration was made on March 5 by an international arbitration court in Singapore.
Compared with an arbitration ruled by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) early this year, the new settlement saves THSRC US$24 million, according to THSRC. Eurotrain filed for arbitration with the ICC in 2001.
The ICC issued an arbitration award on March 15, 2004, wherein THSRC was ordered to pay US$73.04 million in damages and interest to Eurotrain.
Eurotrain -- a consortium led by Germany's Siemens AG and France's Alsthom -- claims THSRC gave it priority negotiating rights for building Taiwan's first high-speed rail in 1997, but awarded the US$14-billion-contract to a Japanese consortium in 1999. But THSRC denied there was any contract.
The 345km railway linking Taipei to Kaohsiung is scheduled to start operating in October next year.
There were rumors that THSRC favored Japan's Shinkansen system over Eurotrain because former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) wanted to forge closer ties with Japan, but THSRC denied there were political considerations.
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
RSS