Toshiba board recommends shareholders support JIP-led $14 billion buyout

TOKYO (Reuters) -Japan’s Toshiba (OTC:) Corp said on Thursday its board of directors has decided to recommend shareholders take up a tender offer from a consortium led by private-equity firm Japan Industrial Partners (JIP).

Toshiba plans to hold an online press conference to discuss the tender offer at 0400 GMT.

The board earlier this year accepted the buyout offer, which would value the conglomerate at 4,620 yen apiece or 2 trillion yen ($14.29 billion), but did not go as far as recommending shareholders tender their shares.

The latest decision helps pave the way for a successful buyout, which would see the scandal-ridden company taken private and firmly in domestic hands after much tension with overseas activist shareholders.

Since 2015, the industrial conglomerate has been battered by accounting scandals and suffered heavy loss, and came close to being delisted. It was then engulfed in a series of corporate governance scandals.

“As a result of the transaction, the company would build a stable management base to implement a consistent business strategy to reform and grow the company over the medium to long term,” Toshiba said on Thursday.

The company said in March the consortium aimed for the tender offer to start in the last 10 days of July 2023 to purchase at least 288,564,300 shares.

($1 = 139.9100 yen)