You may have read just before christmas that Abit, makers of motherboards and PCB's, were in some trouble, financially. It would appear that several things since these rumours surfaced have helped fuel even more rumours of the companies impending doom.

At a provisional meeting on December 23, shareholders of financially troubled Abit Computer approved the company’s plan to sell its office building in Taipei to Deutsche Bank for NT$1.7 billion. The company will use the entire amount to retire part of its bank loans and reduce its total debts to NT$1.9-2.0 billion (US$57-60 million), said company chairman Remond Lu.

Further action was taken on 28th December. Local investors were caught off guard by the approval of an Abit proposal to raise the floor amount of its investments in other companies to 250% of its net worth from the current 150%.

This is not the first time Abit have seemingly been in trouble, with a report comissioned into their finances as long ago as November 2004 (by the Taiwan Stock exchange).

Taiwan’s securities regulatory agency has requested Abit to resubmit its financial statements for all of 2003, 2004 and part of 2005 to the TSE by February 2006. Abit will be delisted from the TSE if it fails to comply with the request. Trading of Abit shares has been suspended since mid-September this year.

Obviously a number of tournaments and clans rely on Abit for their sponsorship and funding for players to attend major tournaments. I was unable to get a quote from any of the Abit staff I spoke to regarding the plans for their e-sports assistance.

I did however catch up with Dignitas team manager d`ODEE. He seemed to know about as much as we do regards the support but offered this as an official response to the current situation.

Team Dignitas continues as usual but obviously we are watching the situation as it develops. We hope that ABIT recover fully as they have been an inspiration in esports and especially for us. If worst comes to worst for us we will just have to send astz! out busking.

The ACON tournament, previously known as an Abit sponsored and run event has been turned over to one of its former staff and all ties with Abit have now been removed from the event.

Abit has come out of the mire before and as an avid supporter of e-sports across the globe, lets hope they can pull through again.

Source : http://www.digitimes.com