Toshiba Misses Its Deadline for a Deal for Its Microchip Unit
The company’s admission that it had not completed a deal with its chosen buyers — a consortium of investors from Japan, the United States
and South Korea — came as an ugly conflict with a rejected bidder, the American company Western Digital, deepened.
Toshiba said it was suing Western Digital for about $1 billion over its attempts to block the sale
of the chip unit, while Western Digital said it had submitted a new offer for the business.
“We are continuing to negotiate with the consortium,” Toshiba said in a news release on Wednesday,
“but coordinating with its various members is taking time, and we have not reached an agreement.”
One factor complicating the chip sale has been Western Digital.
On Wednesday, Western Digital said it had made a renewed offer with its partner in the bid, the American investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts.
The losses at its American nuclear power division, Westinghouse Electric, have cast “substantial uncertainty”
over the century-old company’s ability to stay in business, Toshiba has said in financial statements.