Quanta-fiable confusion

Michael Wang is the president of Quanta Computer, the world’s largest manufacturer of notebook computers. Or he’s not. No one outside of the company’s board knows the answer to that contradictory information.

Here’s the background, and try to follow along, because it gets complicated.
In 2006 co-founder Michael Wang was named president of Quanta Computer, which makes a variety of electronic products in addition to notebooks. He was seen as the heir apparent to co-founder and chairman Barry Lam.

Since Wang’s promotion, Quanta’s experienced a number of production problems for customers such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard. Lam reportedly responded to the factory woes by reassigning responsibility for manufacturing to another company co-founder, vice chairman C. C. Leung. The story was that Wang was quitting, or threatening to quit, over that shakeup.

Then things got weird.

Rumors circulated that Quanta was considering a merger with Hon Hai Precision Industry, the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer. (This rumor has regularly popped up before.) The whispering went on to insist that Wang was not quitting because of any shakeup but, rather, in opposition to the supposed merger.

Hon Hai (also known as Foxconn) stated not once but several times, that it was not merging with Quanta. End of story? Hardly.

Taiwan, the island of rumors and speculation, was abuzz that Wang had resigned, with various reasons given. But this was of no real consequence — it had been reported that he’d resigned on numerous other occasions, only for Wang to reconsider his decision and return to the company. The Economic Daily News of Taiwan reported that Wang was indeed leaving, citing Lam’s improving health — the billionaire chairman had reportedly been hospitalized last year for cancer surgery, which Quanta denied. Quanta Computer publicly responded to news of Wang’s resignation, issuing a statement that Wang was on vacation and that “the company’s daily operation is functioning normally.”

Wang is off from work until Aug. 25, so this soap opera may not wrap up until the end of the month.