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Some news outlets reported that Western Digital was close to acquiring Toshiba's memory business, but that had not been finalized as of Tuesday:
Toshiba Corp now favors a group led by Bain Capital LP and SK Hynix Inc to buy its prized semiconductor business, as it failed to bridge key gaps with its business partner and rival bidder Western Digital Corp, two people briefed on the matter said on Tuesday.
The dramatic twist in the sale process, beset by legal wrangling and revised bids, comes just a day before Toshiba's latest deadline. The Japanese conglomerate, which needs to sell the chip business to plug a huge hole in its finances, had been trying to seal a deal by Wednesday with the Western Digital group but now hopes to reach agreement with the Bain group by next week, said the sources, who declined to be identified as the talks were private.
A Toshiba spokesman said the firm could not comment on details of the talks. The parties have already missed two deadlines by Toshiba's banks, which want a deal to pump $18 billion or more into the company to pull it out of negative shareholder equity and prevent it from being delisted. Yoshimitsu Kobayashi, an external Toshiba director, told reporters earlier on Tuesday that although the deadline is important, it is also important that negotiations head in a good direction.
Apple, a buyer of Toshiba's NAND chips, reportedly threatened Western Digital with a boycott of its products if it took complete control of Toshiba's memory business. But it did offer $460 million in acquisition financing for a group including WD as long as WD remained a minority investor.
Update: Toshiba says it favors a bid from a group led by Bain Capital, but is still open to better offers.
Toshiba to focus on chip talks with Bain, but doesn't rule out other suitors
Start the Bidding War, Toshiba
Previously: Broadcom and Japanese Government Considering Bid for Toshiba's Semiconductor Unit
Samsung Could Boost NAND Production Capacity, WD Intervenes in Toshiba Memory Sale
Toshiba Sues Western Digital as it Seeks to Sell its Memory Business to a Third Party
(Score: 4, Informative) by TheRaven on Thursday September 14 2017, @10:25AM (2 children)
No it isn't. It's an example of anticompetitive practice, but it's not the one that's most regulated. Most antitrust regulations are designed around excessive influence on the supply side, not the demand side. There are a lot of examples of excessive control on the demand side. For example, in the UK the supermarkets have driven the price of milk so low that farmers often make a loss selling it: their choice is either accept a below-cost offer or get nothing for a product that will have gone off in a couple of days. In the US, Walmart has been pushing their suppliers to accept razor-think margins and pushing several of them out of business for years.
Regulating the demand side is a lot harder, because that end of the supply chain ends with consumers. If consumers all decide that they prefer, for example, Android devices to iOS ones, and then shops refuse to sell iOS devices unless there's a big price cut, is this the shops exerting undue influence on Apple?
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by Virindi on Thursday September 14 2017, @10:46AM (1 child)
Okay, that was hyperbole. You got me :)
However, the examples you give are of a different nature. In this case, Apple is trying to manipulate the playing field in a different industry. That is a bit different than merely demanding suppliers give you a very low price.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by TheRaven on Thursday September 14 2017, @11:27AM
It's not very different. It's actually less bad in some respects: typically anticompetitive practice means that they're trying to get a monopoly. In this instance, Apple is trying to avoid anyone else getting a monopoly (or a sufficiently large share of the market that they can act as if they do). They're doing this because as long as the suppliers don't get too big, they retain a dominant bargaining position as the largest single customer for flash chips. If their suppliers consolidate, they'll be in a position to tell Apple to take it or leave it when it comes to price negotiations, because no one else will have the capacity to handle Apple's demand.
The ironic thing here is that Apple is actually pushing for more or less the same thing that antitrust regulators would normally push for. They want a healthy competitive market for flash suppliers. Only this time they want it because they buy so much flash that they can set the prices in a competitive market, whereas they couldn't in a monopoly. It's quite interesting to see a large company effectively arguing for better competition regulation (just not in their own markets).
sudo mod me up