At Toshiba’s flash-memory chip plant in Yokkaichi, the orderly quiet of the clean room, with its metal boxes zipping around on overhead rails, contrasts sharply with the messy feud between its owners over plans to sell this prized asset. Toshiba plans to sell its…
At Toshiba’s flash-memory chip plant in Yokkaichi, the orderly quiet of the clean room, with its metal boxes zipping around on overhead rails, contrasts sharply with the messy feud between its owners over plans to sell this prized asset.
Toshiba plans to sell its memory chip business to a multinational consortium led by Bain Capital investment fund. The Japanese electronics and energy conglomerate’s U. S. joint venture partner Western Digital opposes the deal.
The plant in Yokkaichi, Mie Prefecture, makes highly lucrative SanDisk memory chips – the business Toshiba has agreed to sell to a consortium headed by investment company Bain Capital for 2 trillion yen ($18 billion).
Executives heading Toshiba Corp’s memory business and Bain Capital Japan insisted Friday they will go ahead with the sale by March, if not earlier.
Toshiba Memory Chief Yasuo Naruke and Bain Japan chief Yuji Sugimoto led a media tour of the factory in Yokkaichi, an industrial hub in central Japan, where reporters were shown the site for planned construction of a new building to make state-of-the-art chips, called “3D.” That plan will go ahead with or without Western Digital’s consent or participation, they said.
The tour was clearly intended not only to highlight the plant’s technological prowess but also to demonstrate the unity between Bain and Toshiba Memory.
Tokyo-based Toshiba Corp is suffering massive losses from its nuclear business. Its U. S. nuclear operations at Westinghouse Electric Co filed for bankruptcy earlier this year.
