On Wednesday, September 20, the Japanese conglomerate Toshiba officially announced the sale of semiconductor business. The buyer selected a consortium led by private investment company Bain Capital.

In addition to Bain, this group included a number of Japanese and foreign companies. Their names in the official Toshiba message are not called, but Bloomberg reported with reference to its sources that it is about Apple, Dell, SK Hynix and Hoya. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) wrote about two more companies that are going to participate in the deal as investors: Kingston Technology and Seagate Technology.

The unit for the production of memory chips Toshiba Memory sold for 2 trillion yen (18 billion dollars). Earlier in the media were called larger amounts - up to $ 22 billion.

Toshiba is going to reinvest 350.5 billion yen into its own semiconductor business, so taking into account this amount, the deal is worth around $ 21 billion.

For the acquisition of Toshiba Memory, consortiums were also claimed, led by the contract manufacturer of electronics Foxconn and Western Digital, which has a joint venture with Toshiba,. At some point in time, Western Digital became the preferred buyer of Toshiba Memory. But then in the American company they promised to get out of the fight in exchange for increasing influence on the joint venture.

Toshiba did not want to sell Western Digital's semiconductor assets, as this deal could be delayed due to a long review by regulators. Western Digital's reaction to the final decision of Toshiba at the time of this writing was unknown.

Toshiba is in dire need of money to shore up the financial situation, eroded by the multibillion-dollar write-offs in the US subsidiary Westinghouse.

Because of these difficulties, Toshiba is threatened with the withdrawal of shares from the Tokyo Stock Exchange, which, in turn, will increase the financial problems of the conglomerate.

Ace Research Institute analyst Hideki Yasuda told Bloomberg agency that a large number of applicants for the purchase of Toshiba Memory complicates the decision-making process and slows the conclusion of investment transactions, and also undermines the company's ability to conduct price competition in the chip market.