Toshiba finally overrode the hitches to sell out its semiconductor known as NAND flash memory chip business to a consortium led by US investment group – Bain Capital – for two trillion 300 million yen or roughly $21 billion.
Shambolic Toshiba had put one of it’s the most lush chip business – Toshiba Memory Corporation (TMC) – ‘on sale’ to heal the financial wounds caused by US Westinghouse nuclear division.
Initially TMC’s business partner – Western Digital – hanged back Toshiba to precede the sale but the court dispute eventually ended up with WD joining the consortium.
Then China antitrust authorities broke the proceedings and just approved last month.
All shares of Toshiba Memory Corporation (TMC) have been transferred to special-purpose company, K.K. Pangea including stakes from Apple, Dell, Kingston, Seagate, SK hynix, and Western Digital.
Pangea will have 49.9% voting rights.
As a result of repurchase, Toshiba has also acquired approximately 40.2% of the voting rights in Pangea. Precision equipment maker – Hoya Corporation – will have 9.9% of them.
Net selling price of TMC after Toshiba’s repurchase is about $18 billion.
Once second-largest chip maker in the world behind Intel, Toshiba conceded the #2 position to Samsung in 2010 and finally fell to #8 spot in 2017, according to Gartner.
For the same year, Samsung distraught Intel and pilfered its 26-year top rank in worldwide semiconductor market.