Toshiba shareholders approve sale of chip unit to Bain-led group

October 24, 2017

CHIBA- Shareholders of struggling Japanese electronics and machinery maker Toshiba Corp. on Tuesday approved the company's plan to sell its prized flash memory unit to a Japanese-US-South Korean team led by US private equity fund Bain Capital.

The approval was given at an extraordinary general shareholders meeting held at the Makuhari Messe convention center in the city of Chiba, east of Tokyo. A total of 633 shareholders attended the meeting.

The sale of Toshiba Memory Corp. is intended to allow Toshiba to procure funds to eliminate its negative net worth.

At the beginning of the shareholders meeting, Toshiba President Satoshi Tsunakawa said "I apologize again from the bottom of my heart" for causing trouble and concern.

The shareholders also approved Toshiba's financial statement for fiscal 2016, which ended last March, and the appointments of 10 board directors, including the reappointment of Tsunakawa as president.

Toshiba, which incurred losses totaling over one trillion yen from its US nuclear unit, Westinghouse Electric Co., will get its shares delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange if it fails to eliminate its negative net worth by the end of March 2018. Jiji Press