History

We can trace our history back to 1997 when our Founders noted that there was a trend for companies to outsource their semiconductor manufacturing to foundries located in Taiwan. They also noted that the semiconductor testing capabilities in Taiwan were confined mainly to testing of memory chips. As such, they decided that there were opportunities to provide testing services for non-memory chips.

In April 1998, our Founders incorporated GTC Taiwan to provide testing services in Taiwan. We also incorporated GTC US which became a wholly-owned subsidiary of GTC Taiwan to provide marketing and test program development services in the US. This was to ensure that our marketing and test program development activities were located close to our US customers whom we expected to be mainly fabless companies. GTC Taiwan started offering our testing services in October 1998 with 2 testers and approximately 7 employees at our current premises.

On 2 March 1999, we were awarded the ISO 9002:1998 certification for our inspection services for final test and wafer sorting services.

In August 1999, we were recognized as an approved semiconductor testing sub-contractor of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (?TSMC?), one of the world's largest independent foundries. At that time, we realized that IDMs and fabless companies were increasingly moving their operations to Taiwan. To increase the investment in our testing services capacity, we converted GTC Taiwan to a public company and increased GTC Taiwan's paid-up capital from NT$600 million to NT$800 million by issuing 20,000,000 additional new shares of par value NT$10.00 at NT$18.00 per share to the then shareholders of GTC Taiwan, our employees and certain other specific persons in April 2000. In July 2000, we issued 30,000,000 additional new shares of par value NT$10.00 at NT$30.00 per share to our employees and certain other specific persons to further fund our capital expenditures.

On 14 November 2001, we incorporated Global Investment with a paid-up capital of NT$50 million, to invest in financial investments with our excess cash.

In April 2002, we qualified as one of United Microelectronics Corporation's (?UMC?) approved testing subcontractor after a trial testing services program that commenced in February 1999. UMC is a leading foundry headquartered in Taiwan.

On 12 December 2002, GTC Taiwan's shares were quoted on Taiwan's Emerging Market of the GreTai Securities Market.

In January 2004, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, a global professional services organization named us as one of Asia Pacific's leading technology companies in the 2003 Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Asia Pacific Technology Fast 500.

On 20 July 2004, we passed the ISO 14001:1996 certification in respect of our environmental management practices and systems for wafer sorting, laser repair, IC test, test program development and burn-in activities. In the same month, we were given an award from Pixelworks, a fabless semiconductor company that designs, develop and markets System-On-a-Chip ICs, for our outstanding performance. .

In September 2004, we received Marvell's ?Best Sort Partnership? award for Year 2003.