Thursday, September 21st 2017
Toshiba Elects Bain Capital as Preferred Bidder for its Entire Memory Business
The light is being seen at the end of the tunnel for one of the tech world's most recent debacles. A series of questionable investments and accounting scandals saw Toshiba facing losses in the billions of dollars and see its stock pricing plummet by more than 40%. As such, to staunch the bleeding, the company was looking to only spin-off a 20% stake in its memory business; however, as its finances continued to take a turn to the worse, it then decided on selling a majority, 60% stake to the highest bidder. That would seemingly still not be enough, however, as the company will now sell 100% of its memory semiconductor business to investment consortium Bain Capital.The Bain Capital-led consortium includes key players such as Apple, Dell, Kingston and Seagate, but critically, leaves Foxconn and Western Digital out of the spoils, the latter of which already has ties to Toshiba through joint ventures inherited from its SanDisk acquisition. This same joint venture detail between Toshiba and Western Digital has delayed the bidding process and is a worrying factor for would-be buyers, since it could lead to legal issues in the future and all the accompanying expenses. However, Toshiba has tried to assuage investor fears by simply excluding assets and IP associated with the Toshiba-WD joint venture from the bidding process, which amount to around 5% of it semiconductor business tangible and intangible assets, amending the purchase price to compensate.While there haven't been any announcements yet regarding this acquisition and what it entails for the spined-off memory production company, acquisitions such as these are usually accompanied by a restructuring of the company, which could mean layoffs and reallocation of resources. It would even be a possibility for the resulting company to be hacked to bits through sell-offs and distribution through the Bain Capital-led consortium's partners; however, considering that Toshiba's memory business was its most profitable one, chances are great that the consortium will try and leverage both Toshiba's assets and IP towards achieving even greater profits.
As the second largest manufacturer of NAND flash memory, Toshiba's memory business is valued at around $18 billion; the company still hasn't issued a press release regarding this confirmed Bain-led sale. However, Western Digital has already expressed its disappointment with the outcome in a press release, promising to continue battling in court.
Sources:
AnandTech, Bloomberg
As the second largest manufacturer of NAND flash memory, Toshiba's memory business is valued at around $18 billion; the company still hasn't issued a press release regarding this confirmed Bain-led sale. However, Western Digital has already expressed its disappointment with the outcome in a press release, promising to continue battling in court.
3 Comments on Toshiba Elects Bain Capital as Preferred Bidder for its Entire Memory Business
Source for some of those points: www.nytimes.com/2017/09/20/business/dealbook/toshiba-bain-capital-chip.html?mcubz=1
Now I'm just hoping WD goes to the US.. but I won't bet on it.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bain_Capital