Toshiba Corp., which is embroiled in an accounting scandal, is considering selling its listed office equipment subsidiary Toshiba Tec Corp. as part of efforts to streamline its diversified businesses, sources said Monday.
By selling its over 50 percent stake in Toshiba Tec, a major manufacturer of information terminals for retail stores, the Japanese conglomerate plans to further focus on its mainstay businesses, such as nuclear power and semiconductors, the sources said.
The move is also expected to help Toshiba secure funds at a time when it cannot issue corporate bonds following the accounting scandal, in which the company overstated its profits for years.
Toshiba Tec incurred a group net loss of ¥7.4 billion ($612 million) for the first half of fiscal 2015 due to its sluggish point-of-sale system business, delivering a blow also to its struggling parent company.
Toshiba Tec, listed on the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, has around 20,000 employees in the Tokyo-based company and its subsidiaries.
Toshiba President Masashi Muromachi has said he will proceed with restructuring "without limits," after the accounting scandal led the firm to revise downward its profits totaling ¥224.8 billion ($1.8 billion) on a pretax basis from April 2008 to December 2014.