TSMC chief Morris Chang wins Forbes Asia's accolade
Morris Chang, chairman and chief executive fficer of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC), is named Forbes Asia's 2012 Businessman of the Year.
“Although Morris Chang would deserve a lifetime-achievement award, that's not what we honour him for. In his latest engagement at TSMC, he has renewed the company's leadership in a challenging and changing sector - changing in large measure because of his inspiration,” said Tim Ferguson, Editor of Forbes Asia.
Chang, now 81, has in the past two decades helped to spur a wave of change and innovation in the global electronics industry. Before the 1980s, suppliers of semiconductors for everything from computers to radios mostly spent big sums to design chips themselves and make them in their own factories.
In the middle of that decade, Chang came up with a niche: specialized factory services (also called a ‘foundry’) for companies willing to outsource production. This brought down a huge financial barrier to entry for engineer entrepreneurs and led to a wave of innovations and lower costs for consumers. In 2001, the international edition of Forbes put Chang on its cover as ‘The Catalyst’, noting his leadership of TSMC and the company’s role in accelerating industry innovation.
The story continues today with insight on how Chang, a mainland-born Chinese graduate of MIT and Stanford, had left the CEO seat in 2005 only to return to the helm in 2009 on concerns about the future.
“I had always thought that the company was capable of more. It didn’t happen.”
At age 78, Chang took control again and began yet another remarkable chapter in his career. Chang’s hard work has paid off. TSMC’s shares hit a ten-year high this year; profit for 2012 is en route to a record. In the third quarter, net profit jumped 62 per cent to $1.7 billion.
Listed in Taiwan in 1994, TSMC became one of the first Taiwan companies to be traded on the New York Stock Exchange in 1997. Many of its customers today include the world’s largest chip suppliers, many of which do not have their own factory and instead entrust Chang to do the work and protect their intellectual property.
The future looks bright as TSMC’s business is on a roll with help from what Chang calls the ‘third game-changer’: chips used in smartphones and tablet computers. The groundswell for these newer chips follows the PC boom in the 1980s and the rise of the mobile phone. TSMC has benefited from close ties to a number of winners from the wireless boom, including Qualcomm. Without ties to TSMC, the largest manufacturing source for its chips, Qualcomm President, Steve Mollenkoph says, “we wouldn’t have been here”. Next on TSMC’s customer list could be Apple.
Chang is also credited with integrity in personal and business dealings. He has been spotted taking the Taiwan rail system to work. “His emphasis on integrity is the key,” agreed Stan Shih, a TSMC board member since 2000 and co-founder of Acer, Taiwan’s computer maker.
At age 81, Chang shows no sign of slowing down. “We are still subject to market cycles but we are at a higher level of revenue and profit and we have also increased the technology distance between us and our erstwhile competitors.” He is also as hopeful for TSMC’s prospects as on the day he started out with his contract model a quarter-century ago.
“I am an optimist. In this business, you have to be optimistic – optimistic with good reasons. I think I have got good reasons to be optimistic”.
The full story is on www.forbes.com and the December issue.
