Toshiba Corp’s board yesterday issued a statement in the wake of CVC Capital Partners’ offer to take the Japanese conglomerate private, warning that the proposal is preliminary and might not lead to a transaction.
CVC’s offer is not legally binding and many details still need to be worked out, Toshiba Corp board Osamu Nagayama chairman said.
Any deal also requires extensive regulatory reviews and CVC would have to organize a consortium to line up financing, Nagayama said.
Photo: Bloomberg
“We expect that such financing process would require a substantial amount of time and involve complexity for consideration,” he said.
Directors would conduct a “careful review of the initial proposal when it is further clarified in the future,” he said.
Toshiba’s shares slid 5.4 percent in trading yesterday.
The board also said that the CVC proposal was “completely unsolicited and not initiated by Toshiba.”
The company this week said that CVC made an offer to buy out its public shareholders.
The preliminary proposal is for ¥5,000 per share or about ¥2.28 trillion (US$20.7 billion), Bloomberg News reported.
An acquisition by a foreign buyer might prove difficult because the company has been considered an icon of Japan and several of its businesses have deep strategic importance for the country.
Its nuclear unit, for example, is involved in decommissioning the wrecked Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.
Toshiba is also the largest shareholder in memorychip maker Kioxia Holdings Corp.
Given the sensitivity around Toshiba’s bushiness, Japanese government approval would be required for the deal, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato said.
Separately, Toshiba this week reappointed its chairman, Satoshi Tsunakawa, as an executive officer to have him deal with its largest shareholder, Effissimo Capital Management, people familiar with the matter said.
The board approved the decision during a meeting on Wednesday, said the people, asking not to be identified because the matter is private.
The move gives Tsunakawa a more central role as the tech icon navigates the flurry of deal negotiations.
Singapore-based fund Effissimo has been increasing its pressure on Toshiba in the past few months, including forcing the company to hold an extraordinary general meeting of shareholders last month.
At that event, Toshiba shareholders approved the firm’s request at last year’s annual shareholders’ meeting for an independent investigation into director appointments, despite opposition from Toshiba management.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six