Toshiba Corp., Western Digital remain apart over memory chip unit sale

November 19, 2017

Tokyo- Toshiba Corp. and U.S. partner Western Digital Corp. failed to resolve their dispute in their talks last week over the Japanese company's plan to sell a memory chip unit, informed sources said Sunday.

Toshiba asked Western Digital to drop its legal actions over the dispute as a condition to allow the U.S. hard disk drive maker to jointly make additional investment in a memory chip factory in Japan, but no agreement was reached, the sources said.

"Gaps remain between the two sides," one of the sources said. Toshiba intends to continue talks with Western Digital to win concessions from the U.S. company by the end of this month, the sources said.

Last week's talks in the United States were joined, among others, by Yasuo Naruke, corporate senior executive vice president at Toshiba in charge of semiconductor operations, and Yuji Sugimoto, representative in Japan for U.S. private-equity firm Bain Capital.

Bain Capital leads a consortium of companies that signed an agreement with Toshiba in September to acquire the chip unit, Toshiba Memory Corp.

Toshiba plans to make a decision within this month on whether to invest single-handedly or jointly with Western Digital in the chip factory in Yokkaichi in the central prefecture of Yokkaichi that is jointly operated by the two companies.

The Japanese company has warned that Western Digital would be unable to procure advanced memory chips from the factory if it fails to take part in the investment. Jiji Press