Toshiba’s Preferred Bidder Is Said Set to Miss Finance Deadline

Taro Fuse and Manuel Baigorri, Bloomberg News

Signage for Toshiba Corp. displayed at the company's headquarters in Tokyo, Japan, on Wednesday, April 7, 2021. Toshiba surged its daily limit of 18% after confirming it received an initial buyout offer from CVC Capital Partners, setting the stage for potentially the largest private equity-led acquisition in years. , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- A consortium considering a bid for Toshiba Corp. is poised to miss a Nov. 7 deadline to secure financing for what could be Asia’s biggest deal this year, according to people familiar with the matter.

Four banks including Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. that were considering whether to issue commitment letters for loans to the consortium led by Japan Industrial Partners Inc. has decided not to proceed before the cutoff date set by Toshiba, the people said. The banks have not yet made a formal decision, one of the people said, asking not to be identified as the information is private.

The lenders have been unable to make binding commitments as the potential bidding groups have not finalized details such as deciding on the lineup of their equity partners, people familiar with the matter have said.

JIP’s consortium, which is the preferred bidder, has been considering a takeover of Toshiba at a valuation of about 2.4 trillion yen ($16.2 billion), and is seeking about 1.4 trillion yen from banks, Bloomberg News has reported. The group continues to work on the takeover proposal, the people said.

State-backed investment fund Japan Investment Corp., which is leading a rival group, received approval from Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry on Oct. 27 to increase the size of the fund to 900 billion yen from 200 billion, JIC spokesperson Motoki Okumura said in response to a query from Bloomberg News. The raised fund size will enable JIC to respond to the recent increase in the number of large-scale buyout deals in Japan, and was not specifically granted with individual projects in mind, Okumura said.

The increase came after JIC informed METI it would need to contribute at least 500 billion yen to a Toshiba takeover because of METI’s requirement that the investor contribute a minimum of 50% of the equity in the bid, people familiar with the matter said.

Deliberations are ongoing and the lenders could still decide to issue the letters before the deadline, the people said. Representatives for JIP and SMBC declined to comment. A METI official confirmed the increase in JIC’s fund size and said METI did not receive an application from JIC for a specific project, declining to elaborate further.

Japan’s largest banks have been stung recently by soured lending, such as the financing commitments made to KKR & Co.-owned auto parts supplier Marelli Holdings Co., which entered court-led rehabilitation earlier this year when an alternative dispute resolution process failed. Deutsche Bank AG was set to buy about $690 million worth of the debt from a unit of SMFG, Bloomberg News reported in October.

JIP’s consortium is in talks to form a partnership with domestic companies including Orix Corp. and Chubu Electric Power Co. as well as global investment firms such as Baring Private Equity Asia and CVC Capital Partners, people familiar with the matter have said. CVC is considering reducing its planned contribution to the bid in order to avoid antitrust scrutiny from Chinese regulators, Bloomberg News reported last week.

--With assistance from Yuki Furukawa.

(Updates with lender context in third paragraph.)