SK Hynix bids for a Toshiba memory business stake

The size of the stake the world's No. 2 memory chip maker wanted to acquire had not been decided as the deal was in its early stages, said the person who declined to be named as they were not authorized to speak publicly on the bid.

SEOUL: South Korea's SK Hynix Inc has submitted an initial bid to acquire a stake in Toshiba Corp's memory chip business, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday.

The size of the stake the world's No. 2 memory chip maker wanted to acquire had not been decided as the deal was in its early stages, said the person who declined to be named as they were not authorized to speak publicly on the bid.

An SK Hynix spokesman declined to comment and Toshiba said it cannot comment on specifics of the bidding process.

Toshiba in January said it would sell a minority stake of less than 20 percent in its memory business to offset multi-billion dollar writedowns stemming from U.S. nuclear power unit Westinghouse Electric Co LLC.

Toshiba aimed to raise more than 200 billion yen ($1.79 billion) from the sale, and potential investors included private equity firms, business partner Western Digital Corp and the government-backed Development Bank of Japan, sources have said.

SK Hynix wanted to strengthen its long-term NAND competitiveness by acquiring a stake in Toshiba,

the world's second-largest maker of NAND flash memory chips used for long-term data storage, the person familiar with the matter said.

SK Hynix in December announced a 2.2 trillion won ($1.94 billion) investment to build a new NAND chip plant in South Korea to take advantage of growing storage demand from smartphones and data servers.

($1 = 1,132.8100 won)

($1 = 111.8100 yen)
- Reuters