Toshiba has confirmed that the board has accepted an acquisition proposal
In recent years, Toshiba has been dismantling and selling its subsidiaries. However, it was recently reported that a consortium led by Japan Industrial Partners (JIP) will acquire Toshiba for ¥2 trillion (approximately $15.3 billion). Toshiba subsequently confirmed in a public statement that its board has accepted the acquisition proposal but has not disclosed details about the specific acquirer, only mentioning that the acquisition is expected to take about four months to complete and advising investors to avoid selling their shares at this time.
Toshiba has issued a statement indicating that it has accepted the acquisition proposal, which means that this company, which was founded in 1904, will become the property of others in the future.
In recent years, Toshiba has been involved in scandals such as accounting fraud, with the scale of the scandal exceeding $1 billion in late July 2015, leading to the resignation of its president, Hisao Tanaka. Afterwards, it split its consumer electronics and medical equipment businesses, Toshiba Medical Systems, and later applied for bankruptcy for its US nuclear power subsidiary Westinghouse Electric due to losses exceeding ¥1.1 trillion in the fiscal year 2016. It also gave up its semiconductor division to make up for the losses.
In addition, Toshiba Visual Solutions was sold to China’s Hisense, and its personal computer business was transferred to Sharp, a subsidiary of Hon Hai, and renamed Dynabook. Toshiba Memory, which was split off, was later renamed Kioxia.
If this acquisition proposal is successfully completed, it will be one of the largest deals in the Asian market this year and one of the largest private equity acquisitions in Japan’s history.
