东芝129亿日元向中国海信出售电视业务

Toshiba is to sell its television business in its latest effort to raise emergency funds, parting ways with a division that once symbolised the dominance of Japanese technology and thrust the brand into millions of living rooms around the world.

东芝(Toshiba)将出售其电视业务部门以筹集紧急资金，该部门曾经象征着日本的科技主导地位，并让东芝这个品牌进入世界各地数以百万计的客厅。

In a signal of how far the value of Toshiba’s TV unit has fallen — and of how aggressively Toshiba is now shedding parts of the company — the conglomerate sold 95 per cent of its TV and visual products subsidiary for just Y12.9bn ($114m) to Hisense, the Qingdao-based electronics group. In the past, a big technology sale to China might have triggered outrage in Japan but one Tokyo-based analyst said on Tuesday that the move was “unlikely to raise many eyebrows”.

突显东芝电视部门的价值严重缩水——以及东芝正如何激进地剥离企业的某些部分——的一个迹象是，这家综合企业集团将其电视和映像产品子公司95%股份作价仅129亿日元(合1.14亿美元)，出售给总部位于青岛的电子集团海信(Hisense)。以往，向中资买家出售大笔科技资产可能在日本国内引发愤怒，但是常驻东京的一名分析师周二表示，这笔交易“不太可能引起很大反应”。

The sale comes as people close to Toshiba have described “ongoing problems” behind the scenes of the company’s efforts to secure its finances after huge losses emerged last year at its US nuclear subsidiary.

这笔交易出炉之际，接近东芝的人士透露，该公司为稳住其财务状况而作出的努力背后“问题持续不断”。去年东芝在美国的核电子公司曝出巨额亏损。

In September, Toshiba signed the Y2tn sale of the memory chip business, its most valuable unit, to a consortium led by private equity firm Bain Capital. But the company admitted earlier this month that it was making contingency plans in case the deal was not completed by the end of Toshiba’s financial year in March 2018.

今年9月，东芝签署了以2万亿日元出售其最有价值的存储芯片业务的交易，买家是由私募股权公司贝恩资本(Bain Capital)牵头的一个财团。但该公司本月早些时候承认，正在制定应急计划，以备该交易不能在2018年3月东芝财年结束时完成。

The biggest threat to the sale arises from an embittered legal dispute between Toshiba and Western Digital, Toshiba’s business partner in the joint venture that underlies the unit.

那笔交易面对的最大威胁源于东芝和西部数据(Western Digital)之间一场激烈的法律纠纷。西部数据是东芝在支撑其存储芯片业务的一家合资公司中的伙伴。

Western Digital filed a lawsuit in the US in an attempt to block the sale. The case is expected to drag on for years but lawyers expect that the next few months could produce a judgment on whether the sale could be suspended during that process.

西部数据在美国提起诉讼，企图阻止这一出售。预计该案会拖延多年，但律师们预计，对于在此过程中是否可以暂停出售交易，未来几个月可能会有一个裁决。

A pause could cause significant trouble for Toshiba, which remains at risk of being delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange if the sale is not completed by the end of March and the company endured a second consecutive year in negative shareholder equity.

暂停交易会给东芝带来重大麻烦：如果在明年3月底之前不能完成出售，且该公司连续第二年出现负值股东权益，那么东芝仍有可能被东京证券交易所(Tokyo Stock Exchange)摘牌。

Alongside the sale of the chip unit, people close to the company said Toshiba has been studying how it might offload other parts of a conglomerate that sprawls across hundreds of subsidiaries and affiliates from hospital management to elevator manufacturing.

接近该公司的人士表示，在出售芯片业务部门的同时，东芝也在研究如何剥离其他部门。这个庞大的综合企业集团有数百家子公司和关联公司，业务从医院管理到电梯制造，分布面极广。

Those include the possibility of a sale of new shares — possibly worth as much as Y600bn. Reports of such a large dilution, which emerged last week, lopped about 10 per cent off Toshiba’s value over two days of trading.

其中一个选项是发售新股，可能高达6000亿日元。上周有关这种大幅度稀释的报道使东芝的市值在两个交易日中蒸发大约10%。