Acer has withdrawn its representative from the board of directors at BenQ so each company can focus on its own brand name and avoid conflict over their businesses.
The move announced in a BenQ statement last week was no surpise for the industry. In 2000, Acer went through a major reorganization and BenQ was headed by two of the top managers of the Acer Group at the time: J.T. Wang, the current Chairman of Acer, and K.Y. Lee, Chairman of BenQ.
They have since then become bitter rivals in the global electronics industry, competing in several product lines, including notebook PCs and desktop monitors.
Acer retained a major stake in several former sister or spin off companies after the reorganization, allowing it to continue to place its own representatives on the boards of those firms, including BenQ. But BenQ said the Acer representative, who was supposed to be on the board until May 17, 2008, resigned on Friday.
In a statement, Acer said it sold 50 million shares of its stock holdings in BenQ late last year, and planned to sell an additional 50 million shares this year as part of a plan it announced in July of last year.
It did not say what its holdings would be after the sale.
"Acer has been disposing of its non-core business investments as part of the company's strategy to focus on our core business - IT products. We haven't announced yet when we plan to sell the next quantity of BenQ shares," said to
infowrold Stella Chou, an Acer representative.
Acer currently owns around 7 percent of BenQ's shares, she said. She did not comment on why Acer decided to exit BenQ's board of directors.
The chairmen of the two companies have argued publicly a few times in Taiwan over their competition with each other. The decision to sell off BenQ shares followed one of their disputes.
Acer is the world's third largest PC company.