The year before my trip, in 1997, TSMC was rated No.190 in the FT 500 list of the world’s largest companies – higher than Volkswagen, Toshiba, Guinness and GEC – with a stock market worth of $20 billion.
That success sparked off a Taiwanese revolution.
Two tears before, in 1996, on a previous visit to Taiwan, the founder and CEO of UMC, Bob Tsao, had taken me aback by saying that the company – Taiwan’s oldest chip company – was switching from making proprietary products to becoming a pure-play foundry.
