CVC Capital Weighing Deal for Japanese Conglomerate Toshiba

(Bloomberg) -- CVC Capital Partners is considering buying a major stake in Japanese conglomerate Toshiba Corp., people with knowledge of the matter said.

The buyout firm has been studying a possible investment in Tokyo-based Toshiba, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Shares of Toshiba have risen 33% in Japanese trading this year, giving the company a market value of 1.74 billion yen ($15.9 billion).

Private equity firms have announced $15.1 billion of deals targeting Japanese firms over the past 12 months, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The Nikkei reported earlier that CVC plans to propose a deal to take Toshiba private through a tender offer that could be worth more than $20 billion. A formal proposal may be unveiled as soon as Wednesday, according to the newspaper.

Representatives for CVC and Toshiba declined to comment.

Toshiba Chief Executive Officer Nobuaki Kurumatani was a senior executive at CVC before joining Toshiba in 2018 as the first outsider to lead the company in more than 50 years. Since then, he’s been trying to regain investor confidence after Toshiba was battered by accounting scandals and record losses.

Toshiba, once synonymous with the global ascent of corporate Japan, had been forced to sell its crown-jewel memory-chip business to avoid being delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange. More recently, Toshiba investors passed a resolution backing an overseas hedge fund’s call to investigate voting at its last annual general meeting, heaping further pressure on the Toshiba board.

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