Huang Xiaoming and Li Bingbing once endorsed that for a while, they were in the limelight, but now they have fallen into selling their production and dividing their families.
"Toshiba, Toshiba, Toshiba of the New Age!"
What a familiar sound, how much wind and rain have passed! However, the subject matter of this slogan, Toshiba Company, is already a thing and a person, embattled, and can't stand it!
Recently, Toshiba 's "official announcement" is divided into two companies, splitting the electronic equipment business that has been brilliant for half a century, planning to let it go public independently, trying to complete self-help through a separate portal.
In addition, Toshiba will sell its 55% stake in the air-conditioning division Toshiba Carrier to Carrier Global Corporation, a U.S. joint venture partner, for approximately 100 billion yen.
1
Once a tech giant
For the young people of the Z era, the name Toshiba may be a little unfamiliar, and at first glance I thought it was a niche brand!
But before its decline, Toshiba in the field of electronics was on a par with Samsung. For a long time, Toshiba was the No. 1 in the laptop industry, and its status was equivalent to today's Apple.
Founded in July 1875, Toshiba is Japan's largest semiconductor manufacturer and the second largest manufacturer of integrated motors, with businesses including digital products, electronic components, social infrastructure, and home appliances. Toshiba has been a household name from scratch for more than 140 years.
1875: Tanaka Hisashi, the predecessor of Toshiba, is founded in Nimbashi in Tokyo.
1894: Manufacture of Japan's first hydroelectric generator.
1895: Manufacture of Japan's first induction electric motor.
1930: Manufacture of Japan's first electric washing machines and refrigerators.
1954: Development of Japan's first digital computer TAC for the University of Tokyo.
1955: Started selling Japan's first rice cookers.
1959: Development of Japan's first transistor televisions.
1967: Made the world's first automatic postal code identification device.
1970: Development of the world's first color television telephone.
1991: Development of the world's first batch of 4 million bits of galvanic and non-type electrically erasable programmable read-only memory.
1995: Development of high-density optical disc DVDs. Implement DVD standardization.
2004: Development of the world's smallest direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) with an output of 100 mW.
It made Japan's first refrigerator, television, washing machine, microwave oven, and it led the trend of Japanese white goods.
In the 1980s, Toshiba also became the largest semiconductor manufacturer. Until 2008, Toshiba maintained its position as the third largest semiconductor manufacturer after Intel and Samsung. It can be said that the chip business is Toshiba's only core business that is optimistic about the market.
In the same year, Toshiba held a digital new product and spokesperson conference in Sanlitun Village. At the meeting, Toshiba released idol and powerful actress Li Bingbing and super popular idol Huang Xiaoming as to be today's brand image spokespersons.
In the PC field, Toshiba is also a ride.
Although there are few Toshiba notebook products on the market, in fact, the founder of the world's first real laptop is Toshiba.
In 1985, Toshiba built the world's first laptop, the T1100, which had a built-in rechargeable battery, a 3.5-inch floppy drive, and 256K of memory.
Source: CCTV Finance
Since then, Toshiba has been in the laptop business.
Subsequently, Toshiba launched the lightweight mini Portégé series and the stable and durable Satellite series, which quickly opened up the PC market and made its laptop market share the world's largest in the late 1990s, winning the first place in global sales for seven consecutive years.
2
Financial fraud, forced to the end of the road
Such a powerful business giant, how did Toshiba mix, actually to the point of selling property and splitting up the family!
In 2015, Toshiba was exposed by the Japanese media for falsifying financial statements in order to exaggerate performance, shocking the technology industry in Japan and even the world.
Including the current CEO Of toshiba, Hisao Tanaka, Toshiba's three consecutive CEOs have inflated the company's profits by $1.22 billion through illegal accounting methods for seven consecutive years, which is an unimaginable disaster in Japanese society based on integrity, and the worst brand image damage in Toshiba's 140-year history. At this time, Toshiba's losses were already very serious. If you continue to lose money, sooner or later you will go bankrupt.
The misfortune is that at this time, Toshiba's U.S. subsidiary Westinghouse Electric is also facing bankruptcy.
In 2006, Toshiba hoped to enter the nuclear power industry through the acquisition of Westinghouse Electric in the United States, but at that time, Mitsubishi and Hitachi also had plans to bid, and Toshiba increased its investment in the bidding process in order to compete with its peers, and finally won Westinghouse Electric at a premium of 5.4 billion US dollars.
I didn't think that this acquisition, for Toshiba, was like opening Pandora's box, and the nightmare began.
The Fukushima nuclear power plant leakage accident in 2011 directly led to the global coldfall of the nuclear power industry. Toshiba's nuclear power business was also hit hard, but at that time, Toshiba was still optimistic about the prospects of the nuclear power business. In 2015, Toshiba acquired another nuclear power subsidiary of CB&I through Westinghouse Electric.
This time, Toshiba miscalculated. After the merger, Westinghouse Electric was heavily indebted, incurring huge investment losses of 1400 billion yen (about 92.2 billion yuan) and declaring bankruptcy. This also led to Toshiba's losses in 2016 even exceeding those of the 2008 financial crisis, and the entire group was mired in a debt crisis.
According to Toshiba's financial report, in its fiscal year 2016 (ending March 31, 2017), the company's net loss was as high as 965.7 billion yen (about 36.2 billion yuan), the largest annual loss in the history of Japanese manufacturing companies at that time.
3
Sell Sell Sell!
Toshiba's severed arm survived
In order to survive, Toshiba took the most direct approach: selling assets.
In 2016, the new CEO sold one of the company's most profitable businesses, medical devices, to Canon for 665.5 billion yen (about 44 billion yuan).
Of course, a mere 44 billion is not enough to fill holes.
In the same year, Toshiba sold an 80 percent stake in its white goods business to midea group for 51.4 billion yen (about 3.4 billion yuan).
In November 2017, Toshiba sold a 95 percent stake in its TV subsidiary to Hisense Group of China for 12.9 billion yen (about 840 million yuan).
In June 2018, Toshiba's most valuable segment, the flash memory chip business, which has the second largest memory market share in the world, was sold for $18 billion (about 125.1 billion yuan) to the Japan-U.S.-Korea consortium led by Bain Capital.
In the same year, Toshiba packed up all the "hot potatoes" - Westinghouse Electric for a price of $3.7 billion.
In December 2019, Toshiba also sold its image sensor business to Sony for 19 billion yen.
Tossing and turning, Toshiba's Laodi basically has nothing left. In addition to the nuclear power energy business and infrastructure that are firmly grasped, the last thing left is the electronic equipment manufacturing business and the piecemeal equity spun off when the deed of sale is signed.
And Toshiba's last trump card was also targeted by the capitalists, waiting for Toshiba to breathe. Instead of being eaten away by international capital, it is better to reorganize the family and change the identity to re-emerge.
That's all for today.