Toshiba sues Western Digital for meddling in Toshiba's endeavors to sell its memory chip division

[zMeul]

source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-toshiba-accounting-lawsuit-idUSKBN19J0GU

 

 

Quote

Toshiba is claiming 120 billion yen ($1.07 billion) in damages, saying in a statement that Western Digital is interfering with the sale of its memory chip division.

 

Toshiba also said it has decided to shut out Western Digital employees based outside the Yokkaichi chip plant from accessing information relating to the two companies' joint venture.

 

Toshiba had an offer from a consortium composed of japanese investors and a US private equity firm, Bain Capital - the sum is rumored to be around 18bil USD

but Western Digital meddling in the transaction has thrown a rock in the dealing and Toshiba missed the deadline

 

Western Digital who runs a joint venture with Toshiba's memory plant claims that Toshiba is breaching the joint venture contract and actively seeks a US court injunction to prevent the sale

Western Digital wants the plant for themselves and issued a bit, Toshiba turned them down claiming they pose an anti-trust issue and the bid being too low

furthermore, Toshiba is said to terminate all access for Western Digital's employees to all the systems in fear that they will continue to interfere

 

one other problem seems to be that Bain Capital is doing business with SK Hynix and some Toshiba's board members and Western Digital are not keen to sell their secretes

Western Digital is said to take further legal action of SK Hynix participates in the sale

[xentropa]

I think Toshiba, should have given special consideration to Western Digital.  But the argument of not selling to Foxconn due to potential secret military technology getting leaked to China is pretty idiotic as well.

 

I wonder why Toshiba didn't want to keep their Flash memory business, despite it actually being one of their profitable departments.  I guess either shoving Masuoka under the rug despite his invention would lead to a 20 billion dollar a year industry and/or  losing of some their top engineers to Samsung resulting in Samsung getting the 3Dnand out earlier, are persistent painful reminders.

[Trixanity]

5 hours ago, xentropa said:

I think Toshiba, should have given special consideration to Western Digital.  But the argument of not selling to Foxconn due to potential secret military technology getting leaked to China is pretty idiotic as well.

 

I wonder why Toshiba didn't want to keep their Flash memory business, despite it actually being one of their profitable departments.  I guess either shoving Masuoka under the rug despite his invention would lead to a 20 billion dollar a year industry and/or  losing of some their top engineers to Samsung resulting in Samsung getting the 3Dnand out earlier, are persistent painful reminders.

Toshiba needs money now to stay afloat. Their only business worth something is their flash memory business. Everyone wants to get their hands on it. The rest... Not so much. 

[rawrdaysgoby]

WD owns I think 49% and toshiba owns 51%..... they are afraid That Toshiba selling it to that group will give inside info to sk-hynix... a competitor But nothing was resolved between those two yet Toshiba wanted to sell it asap but WD stalled them and miss that so called deadline that they made for themselves. It was toshiba's only profitable business their ssds.... everything else pretty much died...