The tender offer led by a buyout fund of major Japanese banks and companies called Japan Industrial Partners starts Tuesday and is priced at 4,620 yen a share.
Tokyo-based Toshiba also reported a 25 billion yen loss for the April-June quarter on 704 billion yen in sales, down nearly 5% from the previous year. At least two-thirds of shareholders must offer their stakes for the bid to succeed. Overseas activist investors own a significant number of Toshiba’s shares, and some have expressed dissatisfaction about the bid.The buyout would keep Toshiba in an alliance with Japanese partners. Japan Industrial Partners, set up in 2002 to restructure Japanese companies, has also invested in other Japanese brands like Sony, Hitachi and Olympus.
The Toshiba brand, once prized for household appliances, laptops, batteries and computer chips, became the target of overseas activist shareholders.