PRIVATE EQUITY FAVOURED
Squeezed Toshiba wants funds not rivals to buy stake in chip business
Seoul/Tokyo — Toshiba favours private equity bidders in the sale of a stake in its chip business, as suitors including rivals SK Hynix and Micron Technology vie with financial investors such as Bain Capital, sources say. Toshiba needs to raise funds by the end of March to offset an imminent multibillion-dollar writedown on its US nuclear power business, meaning there may not be enough time to conclude a deal with another chip maker, said one of the sources with direct knowledge of the company’s strategy. That plan, initially at least, would confound attempts by other chip makers to buy a slice of a business that may provide an edge in the booming market for NAND flash memory chips. NAND flash memory is a nonvolatile technology that does not require power to retain data and that is used for long-term data storage. Another of the sources said Toshiba could eventually seek investment from other chip makers once its financial crisis had passed. On Tuesday, South Korea’s Hynix, the world...
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