Terry Gou: the fiery gadget chief guns for top job

Terry Gou, the head of a $41bn gadget assembly empire, has stepped back from his role to contest the presidency of Taiwan. Will that disturb the island’s fragile peace with China? Jane Lewis reports.

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Gou: fierce, but with great foresight
(Image credit: 2016 The Asahi Shimbun)

"The man who made your iPhone wants to run Taiwan," says The New York Times and all, apparently, because of a sea goddess. The mercurial founder of electronics giant Foxconn has thrown his hat into the country's presidential race, claiming that the Chinese sea goddess Mazu encouraged him to "come forward", all the better to support "peace" across the Taiwan Strait.

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Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.

She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.

Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.

She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.