A man walks past the logo of Toshiba in Tokyo. The firm is in talks to sell its image sensor business to Sony for about $165mn to raise cash after an accounting scandal, people familiar with the negotiations said yesterday.

Bloomberg
Tokyo


Toshiba is in talks to sell its image sensor business to Sony for about ¥20bn ($165mn) to raise cash after an accounting scandal, people familiar with the negotiations said yesterday.
The companies are near a deal and may announce it as early as next week, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private.
The Japanese industrial conglomerate is selling assets to raise cash after accounting irregularities cut about $1.3bn off profit reported over almost seven years.
The Nikkei reported the talks between Toshiba and Sony earlier yesterday, without saying where it got the information.
Sony has taken the lead in global market share for chips that smartphones and cameras use to capture and digitise photos.
The company is already quadrupling spending on semiconductors this year to ¥290bn to meet demand for the sensors from customers including Apple and Samsung Electronics. Toshiba spokesman Tatsuro Oishi said yesterday that nothing has been decided. Sony spokesman George Boyd declined to comment.
Sony controlled about 40% of the $8.7bn image sensor market last year, compared with about 16% for its next biggest competitor, Techno System Research estimates. The market is forecast to climb to about $12bn by 2019, and the company expects its sales to increase as much as 62% to ¥1.5tn in three years.
A Japan Inc stalwart, Toshiba makes everything from nuclear power plants to laptop computers and memory chips. In September, the company sold its stake in medical equipment maker Topcon Corp in a ¥49bn deal for a gain of about ¥30bn.
Also in September, Toshiba agreed to sell a 30% stake in a building it owns for ¥37bn and prior to that, sold its 4.6% stake in Finnish elevator and escalator maker Kone Oyj, for a gain of about ¥113bn. Separately, the Yomiuri newspaper reported yesterday that Toshiba may reduce its workforce within Japan by a few thousand
people.
Masashi Muromachi, the company’s president, in September pledged to prune underperforming businesses, including workforce reductions in appliances, personal computers, televisions and semiconductors.
Toshiba had some 198,700 employees as of March 31, the lowest since at least 2009, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
About ¥491bn of Toshiba’s market value has evaporated since the company withdrew its earnings forecast in May and announced an accounting probe that was later expanded.
The Tokyo Stock Exchange has fined the conglomerate ¥91mn for the profit misstatements.