TSMC profits down 22.5 percent, still able to afford a new yacht

It's not been a great year for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company : the chip foundry behind Qualcomm and nVidia's silicon (amongst others) saw profits slump by 22.5 percent in the last quarter of 2011.

Like everything in this world, however, trouble is relative: the business still made a net profit of just over a billion US dollars.

CEO Morris Chang pointed a wealthy digit toward customers clearing out old inventory and said that new orders...