TSMC Chair Mark Liu To Retire In 2024

Mark Liu, the chairman of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), which makes most of the world’s cutting-edge semiconductors for firms including Apple and Nvidia, is to retire from the firm next year, TSMC said on Tuesday.

“Chairman Dr. Mark Liu has decided not to seek the nomination of TSMC board membership for the next term and will retire from the company after the 2024 annual shareholders meeting,” the firm said in a statement.

The board plans for vice chairman and chief executive C C Wei is to succeed Liu’s role, subject to shareholder approval, TSMC said.

Liu joined TSMC in 1993 and became chairman after founder Morris Chang retired in 2018.

‘Next chapter’

Liu’s time at the company has seen it rise to a dominant position in the supply chain for world’s most advanced electronics, including the Nvidia GPU accelerator chips that power artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Liu said in a company statement that he wanted to put his “decades of semiconductor experience to other use, spend more time with my family, and start the next chapter of my life”.

“I am confident that TSMC will continue to perform outstandingly in the years to come,” he added.

Liu’s departure comes at a time of upheaval for chip manufacturing as economies including the US, Japan and the EU look to build more domestic semiconductor plants and diversify away from a geographic region that has become the focus of increasing political tensions.

TSMC has said most of its manufacturing will remain in Taiwan, but the compnay is building plants in Germany, Japan and the US state of Arizona in response to customers’ demands.

Political fault line

The firm’s share price has soared 30 percent this year to value it at $483.3 billion (£380bn), in part due to a boom in AI applications.

Asia’s most-valuable listed firm, the company has said it foresees long-term continued growth boosted by demand for high-performance computing chips for 5G networks and data centres.

The company in October reported third-quarter profit of 211bn Taiwan dollars ($6.69bn), beating analysts’ expectations.