Investment up after TSMC settlement

Foreign investors over-brought more than 160 million shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC) on Wednesday as the market expected the government to ease the foreign investment restriction on semiconductor projects, reports China Post.

This follows TSMC's settlement of a trade secrets dispute with China's Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC). TSMC sued SMIC for allegedly causing more than $1 billion in damages by using 65 of its trade secrets and breaching a $175-million agreement reached in 2005, Jeffrey Chanin, an attorney for the Hsinchu, Taiwan-based company, said last week.

An Oakland judge this week issued a judgment in favour of TSMC, and awarded it a NT$200 million (R46 million) payout, pursuant to an agreement by both companies, said Amelia Hansen, a spokeswoman for the law firm Keker & Van Nest LLP.

CDC Software, a global provider of enterprise software applications, has acquired Activplant, a Canadian-based provider of manufacturing business intelligence solutions, states Manufacturing Business Technology.

CDC expects the move will position its CDC factory as a market-leading manufacturing operations management (MOM) solution.

"We expect this to be an accretive acquisition and fits within our strict valuation criteria," said Bruce Cameron, president of CDC Software. "With CDC Factory and Activplant's out-of the-box MOM functionality, manufacturers do not have to spend costly consulting fees to customise the software to fit their distinct business processes.”

The acquisition of Chartered Semiconductor by Advanced Technology Investment Co (ATIC) and its planned integration with Globalfoundries will help the contract chip maker win more customers, Globalfoundries CEO, Doug Grose, said this week, according to PC World.

"This enhances our ability to then service a much broader and deeper range of customers," Grose said during a presentation at Advanced Micro Devices' 2009 Analyst Day.

Globalfoundries, formerly the manufacturing arm of AMD, was spun off as an independent company and began operating on its own earlier this year. The company is a joint venture between AMD and ATIC and the microprocessor vendor remains its biggest customer.