As per Taiwan labor law, we issued documents on April 3 to over 200 former employees certifying that their employment was terminated due to deteriorating business conditions.

Cisco Systems is ready to pick up the pace of mergers and acquisitions over the next year after the valuations of technology companies slumped.

Elpida's loss widened to an estimated 160 billion yen (US$1.59 billion) from 23.5 billion yen in the previous financial year, the Nikkei said, without citing anyone.

Japan's second lost decade holds worrying lessons for other rich economies. Its large fiscal stimulus succeeded in preventing a depression in the 1990s after its bubble burst—and others are surely correct to follow today. But Japan's failure to spur a strong domestic recovery a decade later suggests that America and Europe may also have a long, hard journey ahead.

...In the long run, they say, there will be only three viable entities, at least at the leading edge of chipmaking: Samsung in memory chips, Intel in microprocessors and TSMC in foundries. The rest will be "nationalistic" ventures in need of regular government bail-outs.

Powerchip Semiconductor Corp., Taiwan's biggest memory-chip maker, is seeking to revise terms on US$157.9 million of debt a week after smaller rival ProMOS Technologies won acceptance to buy back debt at a discount.

"We're interested in finding somthing that really makes sense for us," said Micron Technology CEO Steve Appleton, who sees no compelling reason to join in the Taiwanese government's plan to aid its struggling memory chip industry.

Spurred by growing environmental movement and the implementation of new EPA EnergyStar 3.0 power-consumption regulations, television manufacturers have rallied to the cause this year with new power-efficient TV designs.

Taiwan Memory Co., keen on securing technology from foreign chip makers, is looking to forge an alliance with Micron Technology on top of a partnership announced Wednesday with Elpida Memory, but a three-way tie-up may be complicated and won't provide meaningful benefits, say analysts.

BP on Wednesday said it would cut 620 jobs from its solar power business and that two plants in Spain and part of a plant in the US would be shut as it looks to reduce costs at its renewable energy division.