Abit had somewhat of a blow in March 2003, when
Oskar Wu, a leading engineer on the famous Abit NF7-S motherboard, resigned after the NForce series to become head of the LANParty range at competitor DFI.
On 15 December 2004, the
Taiwan Stock Exchange downgraded ABIT's stock due to questionable
accounting practices. Investigations revealed that the majority of their import/export business was conducted through seven companies, all located at the same address and each of which had a capital of only
HK$2. This made it easy to inflate the reported number of motherboards sold. The
Hong Kong media also reported that the management was being
investigated for embezzling funds from the company.
In June 2005, ABIT partnered with Wan Hai Industries. This container shipping company, also a principal investor in
China Airlines, brought the company much needed capital,
[10] since the company had financial problems at this time, partly due to a
class action lawsuit involving faulty capacitors on their products, but also
because of marketing highly technical products to the general public while offering longer-than-average warranties and generous return policies.
On 25 January 2006, ABIT announced that USI intended to purchase ABIT Computer's motherboard business and brand and announced a special shareholders meeting to discuss the sale of ABIT's Neihu building, changing ABIT's company name, the disposition of the company's assets, and the release of the directors from non-competition restrictions. ABIT sold its own office building in Taipei to
Deutsche Bank in order to raise money to cut its debt.
Following USI's acquisition of the motherboard business, the remaining divisions of ABIT switched to distributing components and networking products, while using its
Suzhou, China plant only to offer some motherboard contract manufacturing services.
The acquired motherboard business and the 'ABIT' brand name were used by USI under the new brand name
Universal abit. In the US, it was known as Universal abit USA Corporation. The old company, ABIT Computer Corporation (USA), is now dissolved and is no longer in existence.
Universal Abit later announced that it would close on 31 December 2008, and officially cease to exist on 1 January 2009.
[2] By 2009, Abit no longer sold motherboards.