HONG KONG (Reuters) – China’s biggest chipmaker SMIC said on Wednesday its board is aware that Mong-song Liang intends to resign from the co-CEO role.
The company is working actively to verify Liang’s plans to leave, Semiconductor Manfuacturing International Corporation said in a filing to the Shanghai stock exchange.
Liang was appointed as SMIC’s co-CEO alongside Zhao Haijun in 2017.
SMIC is a key player in China’s efforts to build up its domestic semiconductor supply chain but has come under heavy pressure this year from the Trump administration, which curbed U.S. companies from supplying SMIC goods and services.
The firm had been expected to more than double its spending this year to make higher-end chips but said last month it had decided to reduce its capital expenditure plan because of the U.S. export controls.
The U.S. also added SMIC and other Chinese companies to a blacklist of alleged Chinese military companies this month that will prevent U.S. investors from buying the firms’ securities from late next year.
That has prompted index providers such as MSCI Inc to delete its securities from some global indexes.
(Reporting by Meg Shen in Hong Kong and Brenda Goh in Shanghai; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)
