TOKYO – Toshiba said enough shareholders participated in a 2 trillion yen (S$18.4 billion) tender offer led by private equity fund Japan Industrial Partners (JIP) to take the electronic group private and end its 74-year-long run as a listed entity.
Toshiba, whose roots go back to 1875, said the JIP-led consortium now holds 78.65 per cent of all its shares. That clears the way for JIP to squeeze out the remaining shareholders and take full control of the company in what is set to be Japan’s biggest deal in 2023.
Toshiba said it will finalise a delisting date from the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The company’s retreat would close a troubled decade at the firm, marked by scandal, crippling losses and clashes with activist shareholders.
A lengthy auction process has kept the inventor of the world’s first laptop and flash memory in limbo during a year of sector-wide change brought about by surging interest in artificial intelligence.
In the interim, Toshiba’s chip affiliate Kioxia Holdings has fallen further behind market leaders Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, while talks to merge with Western Digital’s flash memory business dragged on.
Toshiba’s executives and lenders have said privatisation allows Toshiba to focus on longer-term strategy. The company, whose businesses include nuclear power plants, power semiconductors, batteries and hard-disk drives, has circled through three presidents in as many years. Earlier in 2023, chief operating officer Goro Yanase stepped down to take responsibility for inappropriate entertainment expense claims.
Once celebrated for its technology innovations, Toshiba paid what was Japan’s largest-ever penalty for falsifying financial statements in 2015. It then suffered a disastrous foray into the nuclear business that forced it to take a US$6.3 billion (S$8.6 billion) writedown and sell off its crown jewel memory-chip business, reorganised as Kioxia.
Activists began circling the troubled company and in 2021, it announced plans to split into three units, only to revise that plan in favour of a two-way split in 2022.
The chief executive at the time resigned to take responsibility for the chaos, after which the board began soliciting bids to take the company private. BLOOMBERG
