Trump warmly welcomes Penangite to White House after Broadcom relocation news

PETALING JAYA: A Penangite was given a warm welcome by US President Donald Trump in the Oval Office after his company, Broadcom Ltd, announced that it will relocate its headquarters from Singapore to the United States.
Broadcom Ltd, formerly known as Avago Technologies, is an American designer, developer and global supplier of products based on analog and digital semiconductor technologies within four primary markets: wired infrastructure, wireless communications, enterprise storage and industrial and others.
After Trump delivered the announcement, Broadcom founder Tan Hock Eng was invited to the podium in the White House to say a few words.
"Let me say my mother could never have imagined that one day her son would be here in the Oval Office in the White House standing beside the President of the United States," he said.
Broadcom under the leadership of Tan is a Fortune 500 company employing more than 15,000 workers, half of them in the US.
"Back in 1971, I was just an 18-year-old skinny kid growing up in Malaysia, but who had just received an opportunity to enrol in the best engineering school in America, in fact in the world, MIT," he said in his speech.
"My parents could not have afforded to send me to college, much less MIT. It's really amazing even today, that this American educational institution took a chance on me, and gave me a scholarship to pursue the American dream," he added.
Tan, 65, said he was lucky to have gone through the American education system.
He also holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and worked with Tan Sri Quek Leng Chan as managing director of Hume Industries in Malaysia from 1983 to 1988.
Tan has held senior financial positions with PepsiCo, Inc and General Motors Corporation.
In 2015, Tan, who headed Singapore-based Avago Technologies Ltd, bought Broadcom Corp for US$37 billion (RM156.31 billion), making it the largest tech acquisition in history, dwarfing even the Whatsapp-Facebook deal worth US$22 billion.
In September this year, Broadcom opened its global distribution warehouse at Batu Kawan Industrial Park in Penang with plans to invest RM4.1 billion to expand its entire supply chain operations in Malaysia over the next 10 years.
Its exports are expected to hit RM65 billion in 2018, making it the country's biggest semiconductor and electronic exporter.