Japanese household name Toshiba is in crisis after huge losses and the possible sell-off of its nuclear division, threatening a new nuclear plant project in the UK.
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Japanese industrial giant Toshiba’s future may be at stake after it revealed huge financial problems that on Tuesday claimed the company’s boss, Shigenori Shiga, who has shouldered the blame and resigned.
First Toshiba spooked investors by delaying the publication of its financial results, but then it issued a forecast of a three billion euro loss for the latest financial year. Worse, the company’s nuclear business has run up nearly double that in losses.
Shares slumped further on the news, and have now halved in value since mid-December when news about the troubled nuclear division broke. Less than a decade ago the company was worth five times more.
RT
FinancialXpress</a>: <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Nikkei?src=hash">#Nikkei</a> drops as sentiment sours after <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Toshiba?src=hash">#Toshiba</a> delays earnings release<a href="https://t.co/PJn6LOhGu8">https://t.co/PJn6LOhGu8</a><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Nikkei?src=hash">#Nikkei</a></p>— FactFinder (aSmartRadar) 14 février 2017
The markets have been angered at the lack of transparency, and Toshiba has paid the price as investors cut their losses and pulled out.
Toshiba may now quit the nuclear business completely, selling Westinghouse Electric in the USA, the source of the losses, and pulling out of the newbuild Moorhouse reactor project in Cumbria, Great Britain.
#Toshiba, hit by #Westinghouse financial scandal, to spin off #SSD business https://t.co/TBYzRtdaAM #Samsung #Intel #Micron #WesternDigital
— Mark Chamberlain (@mchamberlain99) 4 février 2017
The company is no stranger to scandal. It lost its previous boss in 2015 after news broke Toshiba had been overstating its profits for seven years.