Thursday, March 28

Toshiba’s top shareholder would sell stake to Bain -filing


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TOKYO — The top shareholder in Toshiba Corp would sell all of its shares if US private equity firm Bain Capital were to launch a takeover bid, Effissimo Capital Management said in a regulatory filing.

When asked about the filing, a spokesperson for Singapore-based Effissimo, which owns about 9.9% of Toshiba, said the fund planned to announce its stance at the appropriate time.

Bain said in a statement nothing had been decided about a takeover bid for Toshiba, adding there were many issues that needed to be resolved to launch a bid to take Toshiba private.

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“We believe we need to have careful and sincere dialogs with Toshiba management, the Japanese government, financial institutions and other stakeholders,” it said.

Toshiba had no immediate comment, a spokesperson said.

Reuters reported last year that Bain was looking at formulating a bid to take Toshiba private, making it one of several companies said to be interested in such a deal.

During a five-month strategic review through November, Toshiba held discussions with private equity firms but decided not to entertain potential offers. Sources said the private equity firms Toshiba held talks with included Bain, KKR & Co Inc and Blackstone.

Toshiba shareholders voted down competing proposals last week – one presented by management to spin off its devices unit and the other backed by activist shareholders for a private equity buyout, leaving the future direction of the embattled Japanese conglomerate uncertain.

Bain owns Kioxia Holdings Corp, the world’s second-largest maker of NAND flash memory chips. Toshiba has a 40% stake in the chipmaker. (Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki Editing by David Goodman and Mark Potter)



financialpost.com