Silver Lake has partnered with chipmaker Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO) to make a 2 trillion yen (roughly $17.9 billion) offer for Toshiba’s memory chip business, according to the Nikkei Asian Review.
The bid comes after Toshiba’s (TKO: 6502) shareholders approved the offloading of its chip business on Thursday to help cover losses from its incomplete and over-budget nuclear power plant project with Westinghouse, which filed for bankruptcy earlier this week. The company thinks investors will value the flash memory unit at around the same figure as Silver Lake and Broadcom’s offer, per Reuters.
And there’s been no shortage of interest either, with some 10 potential bidders reportedly vying for the company. If Silver Lake’s bid wins out, it would mark the tech-focused firm’s second major deal in Asia in 2016. In January, the Menlo, CA-based Silver Lake led a $1.1 billion growth round for China’s Koubei, the provider of a search engine portal that connects customers to local services such as restaurants and housing.
But overall deal activity from US investors in Asia is substantially down of late, with just 18 transactions completed so far this year, according to the PitchBook Platform. At this pace, that would mark a massive drop after 162 deals were struck in Asia last year and would represent an even bigger divide compared to 2015, when US investors completed 241 deals in the region, a high since 2010.
Article by Adam Lewis, PitchBook
