China: Toshiba eyes cancelling chip unit sale if no China approval by May

Japan’s Toshiba has decided it will cancel the planned US$18.6 billion sale of its memory chip unit if it does not get approval from China’s anti-monopoly regulator by May, reported Bloomberg.

A consortium led by US private equity firm Bain Capital last year won a long and highly contentious battle for the unit, which Toshiba put up for sale after billions of dollars in cost overruns at its Westinghouse nuclear unit plunged it into crisis.

But Toshiba was unable to complete the sale by the agreed deadline of March 31 as it was still waiting for approval from China’s antitrust authorities.

Toshiba raised US$5.4 billion from a share issue to foreign investors late last year and it has now decided it does not need to go through with the sale, the Mainichi newspaper reported. It did not cite any source.

“Waiting for approval from Chinese authorities is all that’s left to do,” Toshiba CEO Kurumatani Nobuaki said in an interview this month. “Not getting the approval would qualify as a material change.”

Full Content: Bloomberg

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