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Three is a trend, so the saying goes.
So news of two more big company demergers today, hot on the heels of the three-way break-up of 129-year-old US industrial giant General Electric announced on Wednesday, suggests that “doing the splits” is being looked at anew by company boards.
Toshiba, one of the best known companies in Japan, announced that it is breaking itself up – also splitting itself into three separate businesses.
The 146-year old company said one of the them would be focused on infrastructure, including products and services such as water treatment, trains, power turbines and nuclear-plant maintenance.
A second will be focused on electronic devices such as power semiconductors.
The third business, which will retain the Toshiba name, will manage the company’s stake in the flash-memory company Kioxia Holdings and other assets.
The move follows an accounting scandal six years ago – after which activist shareholders urged the company to break itself up.
The measure, however, may not go far enough with those investors that had wanted Toshiba to go private.
It received – and rejected – a takeover proposal in April from CVC, the private equity group, valuing it at $20bn.
General Electric announced a break-up earlier this week
Toshiba’s move attracted a good deal of interest since it has echoes of the GE announcement which, in turn, was at least partly inspired by similar moves two years ago by the German industrial stalwart Siemens.
Hot on the heels of that news came the announcement that Johnson & Johnson, the $429bn healthcare and consumer goods giant that is America’s 12th largest public company, is to split itself in two.
J&J, the world’s biggest healthcare company by both sales and market value, will hive off its consumer health…
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Source : skynews
