The Japanese Toshiba said Friday that it has completed the sale of its chip unit to a consortium led by the U.S. private equity firm Bain Capital for a total of $18 billion. This is something we have been talking about for many months now, and it is finally complete. The consortium currently includes South Korean chip manufacturer SK Hynix, Apple, Dell, Seagate and Kingston.
Bain Capital finally takes over Toshiba’s chip division
The formalisation of this agreement was initially scheduled for the end of March but had been delayed due to a prolonged review by the Chinese antitrust authorities. China finally approved the agreement last month so it has been completed without problems.
Last year, the Bain Capital consortium won a long and highly controversial battle for Toshiba Memory, the world’s second-largest producer of NAND chips. Toshiba has had to make the decision to put the business up for sale after problems at its Westinghouse nuclear unit had plunged the company into a multi-billion dollar economic crisis in cost overruns. Under the agreement with Bain, Toshiba bought back 40 percent of the unit and therefore remains a major shareholder in its former chip manufacturing division.
Toshiba is the developer of the NAND memory stacking technology called BiCS, the most advanced in the industry and responsible for much of the company’s value. This agreement is a great lifeline to all of Toshiba’s financial problems, a move that has been necessary to secure the company’s future.