Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's (TSMC) highly anticipated US chip fabrication plant is being threatened with delays as a key supplier finds itself in the throes of a boardroom power struggle.

TSMC's longtime cleanroom equipment supplier, Jiangxi Hantang System Integration Co. (JASIC), has been tapped to outfit the company's new chip fabrication plant in Arizona, and all seemed to be on track until the supplier's largest shareholder started pushing to replace the company's managing officers.

The boardroom shakeup is apparently a long time coming and follows the 2015 death of JASIC's founder. At that time, a majority stake in the company transferred to the founder's widow, Ms. Li Huiwen, but chairmanship of the company stayed with Mr. Chao Shui Chen, with Mr. Bai Chen Chen serving as its general manager.

Now, Shui Chen is set to retire and Huiwen is returning to the company with her own cohort to fill out the firm's board of directors. All of this has apparently thrown all of the company's contracts into uncertainty, including the one with TSMC to supply cleanroom equipment to TSMC's Arizona plant.

Current management has forged a close working relationship with TSMC over the years and there is concern that with a changing of the guard at the top, there could be additional changes further down the line in the engineering departments where more direct cooperation between JASIC and TSMC on setting up fabrication facilities takes place.

While none of this has been decided yet, the potential for any kind of disruption – however brief – could spell delays for setting up the Arizona plant, which is coming at a particularly bad time for the industry.

By: DocMemory
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