Toshiba signs £26.4 billion deal for TMC sale

Toshiba has confirmed that it has accepted an offer for its recently spun-off Toshiba Memory Corporation division which will see a consortium led by Bain Capital paying around 2 trillion Yen (approximately £26.4 billion) for the entire company, while Toshiba itself will invest back 350.5 billion Yen (approximately £4.63 billion) into the resulting company, Pangea.

Toshiba has been looking for a cash injection for some time, following a disastrous attempt to break in to the US nuclear energy market, and in January this year announced it was to spin off the bulk of its semiconductor division, minus its imaging arm, as Toshiba Memory Corporation and sell off around a third of the business. Trouble began when Western Digital found stiff competition for the acquisition, with the company using its SanDisk subsidiary to seek to block the sale. As Toshiba began narrowing down the list of possible bidders WD continued its legal fight against the deal, with Toshiba beginning legal proceedings of its own as a result.

Earlier this month Toshiba announced a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Bain Capital as the leader of a group of investors understood to include SK Hynix and Apple. Now the company has inked a deal which will see Toshiba Memory Corporation sold to the consortium wholesale for around £26.4 billion with Toshiba reinvesting around £4.63 billion of that back into the newly-formed holding company Pangea, leaving TMC itself divorced from Toshiba proper.

While Toshiba plans to have the deal completed by March 2018, though, Western Digital's legal moves to block it continue - which may yet derail the process and prevent the cash injection Toshiba so badly needs.