BenQ Rejects Claims
March 23, 2007
BenQ Corp rejected claims for a billion-dollar compensation bid from German creditors on Friday, calling it unrelated to the corporation.
"These creditors do not have a direct relationship with us, and we have not received such claims yet," BenQ spokesman Wang Tan-ju said. "We have consulted our legal advisers and they say there is no legal basis for such an action because BenQ Mobile is an independent enterprise."
Making global headlines
On Wednesday, 4,350 creditors of BenQ Mobile met in Munich to prepare a claim of 1.2 billion euros ($1.6 billion) in compensation from BenQ. The creditors include BenQ Mobile employees and Brazilian soccer star Ronaldo, who appeared in a 2005 TV commercial promoting BenQ Mobile.
BenQ Mobile in 2005 was the sponsor for Spain's Real Madrid, Ronaldo's team at the time.
BenQ made headlines when it bought the loss-making mobile phone unit of Siemens in 2005 and grabbed media attention again in 2006 when it dumped the unit, citing huge losses due to failure of integration.
The move triggered speculation that BenQ, a nearly unknown company before 2005, merely wanted to acquire Siemens' name to launch the BenQ-Siemens line of mobile phones, a charge BenQ firmly denied.
BenQ has so far launched about two dozen models of BenQ-Siemens mobile phones.
Insider trading
The insolvency of the German unit, called BenQ Mobile, left 3,000 German staff out of work.
The German creditors' compensation claims come at a time when Taiwan prosecutors are probing BenQ for allegations of insider trading.
BenQ Chairman KT Lee has denied the charges but prosecutors have detained BenQ's chief financial officer Eric Yu.
Meanwhile, German prosecutors confiscated documents including emails and the sale contract between BenQ and Siemens, according to a report in the Friday's Süddeutsche Zeitung.
"We are examining them to see if any laws were broken," said Munich prosecutor Anton Winkler.
He added that the target of the investigation are officials of the German BenQ subsidiary.